Re: Storage subsystem for HA server

[Chris Hunter <cjhunter@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This talk of servers & RAIDs makes me wonder if anyone is running 'XP
through Parallels on an Xserve ... 'ought to be good, and

http://weblog.infoworld.com/enterprisemac/archives/2006/12/kill_two_window.html

seems to suggest it would work ... even has RS-232, VGA, and PCI-X, as
well as all the more modern stuff !

Chris


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Friday, 2 Feb'07 - 13:20:23 -0000

from: Paul Gordon   paul@xxxxxxx

Chaps -

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 it does quite a bit !).   I've already got the Mobo, CPU,
RAM, & new Geovision card ready to go ... my thoughts are now turning
to
the storage subsystem ...

The current server has 2x250GB drives in a stripe set, (500GB capacity,
no 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 app's 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 odds 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 five 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, so sticking with a single disk for the
OS is not desirable).

So my next thought is just three larger drives, possibly 3x320GB or
3x400GB 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 gives 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 three drives initially, I may add a
fourth 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
have 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 least four ports, and I'm quite constrained on PCI slots,
but I have one 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
four-port jobbie.

A cheap option is something like the Highpoint RocketRaid 2310 at around
£100.   However, I'm also quite tempted by the ARECA 1210, which is
almost exactly double that, at around £220 - both are four-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 other
cards from ARECA ? - I already have a highpoint RocketRaid card in
another server (an RR1820 PCI, eight-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 deal 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