[Samba] big file server

[Honza Houstek]

> > I plan to set up a big file server, something like motherboard with 4
> > ide ports and an additional 4 ide daughter card, a PIV proc and 512 or
> > 1024 MB ram, a 100 or 1000 MB NIC, with 6 or 7 200 GB ide HDDs in a
> > sigle box. I don't need lightning performance, just disk space. Of
> > course this would be served by some linux os and samba
>
> I would strongly recommend using a 3ware Escalade hardware RAID card
> rather than software RAID for putting the drives together.

I'm running one fileserver with 1 x PIII, 3x 100Mbit NIC, 4 x 160GB IDE
drive, 2 of them connected to onboard IDE and the rest 2 to PCI 2-port IDE
card. Each disk has only one partition and all are connected to linux SW
RAID-1 with XFS on top.

System and swap are placed on a separate SCSI disk.

I must confess that I was afraid of the software raid but the experience
is great, we had no problem for 1 year and the performance is very good.

-- Honza Houstek