SCSI drives recommendations

[Daniel McNamara]

The machine is an Acer Altos 1900B (
http://www.acersupport.com/ess/html/9100b_specs.html ) and does have a few
fans but I'm not quite sure it will be enough. The noise won't be such a
problem for me as it will eventually be living in the server room at work. I
intend to turn this machine into a web server / SQL database server. The
main reason I want to fully populate the drive bays is because I've never
worked with RAID and we are beginning to look into them at work. I'm not
looking at getting anything spectacularly large (especially because of the
lack of immediate cash problem) just enough smallish SCSI drives to allow me
to start playing with RAID.

But having that in mind would a web / SQL server benefit from a RAID array?
Or is it better just having one large disk? The web server will be used for
commercial use so my main hope for the RAID will be to protect the integrity
of our customers data.

Cheers

Daniel




----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Cottrill" <richard_c at tpg.com.au>
To: "Daniel McNamara" <daniel at cit-linux.net>; "Canberra Linux User Group"
<linux at samba.org>
Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2002 10:59 PM
Subject: RE: SCSI drives recommendations


> This sounds like a serious server case and so I'd expect that case cooling
> has been taken care of by some reasonably huge fans scattered about (if
> there aren't any then there's definitely going to be brackets for them -
> just fill the brackets). You may have to worry a bit more about keeping
the
> room cool. I have a very lightly loaded system (roughly similar to your
own
> but with dual PPro instead) and it can warm my room quite effectively.
More
> pressing for me is that I've had disconnect to two (of five) fans and rig
up
> some very crap sound insulation to keep myself sane. I still can't sleep,
or
> even relax, when it's running.
>
> I wouldn't *plan* to fill the disc bays with anything; unless you have
some
> special requirement (like a raid and/or serious file serving) you'd be
much
> better served by buying one new, large disc. Something with a spindle
speed
> up around 15k RPM is probably a nice start :).
>
> Richard
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: linux-admin at lists.samba.org [mailto:linux-admin at lists.samba.org]On
> > Behalf Of Daniel McNamara
> > Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2002 11:29 AM
> > To: Canberra Linux User Group
> > Subject: SCSI drives recommendations
> >
> >
> > Hey again guys,
> >
> > Many thanks to the (incredibly) quick replies to clarify about
> > the multiple
> > processor question. Now for something completely different.
> >
> > Having spent the last 4 hours swearing vehemently because I
> > couldn't get the
> > any Linux distro to run from the SCSI CDROM on this system because they
> > would all hang on loading the Adaptec module, I finally realised
> > something.
> > The driver was fine. Perfect. Just the CDROM was fnargled. Proved
> > this point
> > by digging through my boxes of old computer bits to find an old
> > caddy based
> > SCSI CDROM. Plug it in and it worked first time. Sigh. Why didn't
> > I think of
> > that earlier?
> >
> > Anyway to cut a long story short I got the machine as is from the
computer
> > fair with one 4.3 gig SCSI hard drive and one (now confirmed useless)
24x
> > CDROM. Now whilst the caddy loading drive does work it's not exactly my
> > ideal choice so my question is this: What are you recommendations for
SCSI
> > drives (both hard drives and CDROM's). In relation I'm looking at
fitting
> > the machine with a CD burner but at this point in time I don't
> > have a lot of
> > cash so I don't mind buying second hand as long as it works. The machine
> > also has 8 hot swap 68pin SCSI bays, one of which is being used by the
4.3
> > gig drive. I'm looking to populate all the bays with anything I can get
my
> > hands on. Any size will suit me fine if anyone has some for sale or
knows
> > where I can get some for a good price.
> >
> > Oh just while getting recommendations, anyone have a really good case
> > cooling system? With both CPU's at full blast and the drives bays fully
> > populated I imagine it's going to get quite warm in the case. Not
> > to mention
> > the dual 420 watt power supplies.
> >
> > Cheers
> >
> > Daniel
> >
> >
>
>