RE: Storage subsystem for HA server

["Jonathan Hall" <jonathan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Off topic a little, how are you going to house it all.  I bought an
ICY bay
fro Aria, it can hold four drives in three 5.25 bays. They also do a five
drive  in three 5.25 but you may need to do some metal work to get it in
th=
e
case.  From the diagrams of it there can be no protrusions into the space
i=
t
slots and my PC had tinny little shelves on either side to support devices
as you slide them in.  I think it is mint, hot swap features, powers four
drives off two Molex connections.

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Cheers

Jonathan

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From: ukha_d@xxxxxxx [mailto:ukha_d@xxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Paul Gordon
Sent: 01 February 2007 13:20
To: UKHA_D Group
Subject: [ukha_d] Storage subsystem for HA server

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Chaps,=20

I've started assembling the hardware to rebuild my main server. This is my
HA server (Homeseer), File server, Webserver, Geovision server, Domain
Controller, Exchange 2003 server, and a few other little bits besides (so
i=
t
does quite a bit!) I've already got the Mobo, CPU, RAM, & new Geovision
car=
d
ready to go, my thoughts are now turning to the storage subsystem...

The current server has 2 x 250GB drives in a stripe set, (500GB capacity,
n=
o
redundancy), and a single 80GB disk for the OS etc. (also no redundancy).
All these disks are standard PATA IDE disks, off the mobo's IDE channels.
(This server runs all those apps just fine by the way, but for several
reasons, I need to upgrade it regardless...)

This time round, I definitely want redundancy in the storage. I don't
particularly need to increase the capacity; around about the 0.5TB level is
sufficient for this server - I haven't filled the 580GB that I have
currently. I also want to build a server that is as power efficient as
possible, which implies not bunging in loads of disk drives, so I'd rather
use fewer larger drives, in preference to more smaller ones. This is at
odd=
s
with my first thought which was to have a pair of 80GB drives as a RAID1
(mirror) set for the OS, and then a separate RAID5 set for the data
volume.=
.
- this demands 5 drives which increases the power requirements quite a
bit... and since an 80GB drive uses the same amount of power to run as does
a 400GB drive, this seems quite wasteful from an electrical efficiency
viewpoint.. (I definitely want redundancy for the OS as well as the data,
s=
o
sticking with a single disk for the OS is not desirable).

So my next thought is just 3 larger drives, possibly 3 x 320GB or 3 x 400GB
in a single RAID5 set, yielding either 640GB or 800GB useable space
respectively), and to put everything on that, just using the standard
Windows partitioning to create the separate volumes on the array. This
give=
s
a slight increase in capacity, no increase in the physical number of
drives=
,
and provides redundancy for everything.

I want the drives to be SATAII-300 to maximise performance, and possibly
utilise the hot-plug facilities in future. I intend to use "Raid
Edition"
drives, probably the Western Digital RE range. And although I'll probably
configure 3 drives initially, I may add a 4th later as a standby/hot spare,
or indeed, for capacity expansion should the need arise.

The choice I'm mulling at the moment is the controller... firstly, Mobo
integrated, or dedicated card? - Mobo doesn't support RAID5, so I would
hav=
e
to use Windows software RAID.. - not overly keen on this option... So that
points to a dedicated RAID controller card, - but which one? I need at
leas=
t
4 ports, and I'm quite constrained on PCI slots, but I have 1 each of PCI-e
x1, x4 and x16 slots, not currently intended for use by anything else, so
I'm looking for a PCI-express 4-port jobbie.

A cheap option is something like the Highpoint RocketRaid 2310 at around
=A3100. However, I'm also quite tempted by the ARECA 1210, which is almost
exactly double that, at around =A3220... Both are 4-port PCI-Express cards,
both would probably do the necessary... The dearer option is clearly a
better featured card, but I've never heard of this manufacturer before,
which is always a bit of a concern...

Does anyone have experience of either of these particular cards, or of
othe=
r
cards from ARECA? - I already have a highpoint RocketRaid card in another
server (an RR1820 PCI, 8-port), which has been just fine for the last year
or so, although to be honest, I haven't yet tested the abilities of it's
array expansion feature (although that is looming quite soon), and
fortunately, I've also never needed to test its redundancy abilities to
dea=
l
with a failed drive... Alternatively, anyone got any other candidates I
should look at?

http://www.areca.com.tw/products/pcie.htm
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA/rr2310.htm

Discuss....

Cheers

Paul G.

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