Re: [Hardhats-members] Linux question: Redhat 9 vs. Fedora 3?
My son and I had a discussion about Fedora Core 3 because our upgrade this time was less than smooth. I suspect that things will iron out rapidly, but be sure to do an update as soon as you install it if you use it. It might be that Fedora is moving a little to rapidly for a server like this and you would be better off with the Enterprise edition of RedHat. Raymond was considering the merits of Debian for a server. He is in the process of installing to see how it works out on one of his machines, but it apparently does not work with your machine, so that is out. On Monday 13 December 2004 10:35 am, Maury Pepper wrote: Kevin, I expect you could find newsgroups or discussion lists somewhere that would be tuned to this issue. For example, there are over 1,000 hits on Google groups searching for redhat dell server raid. - Original Message - From: Kevin Toppenberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Hardhats Sourceforge [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, December 13, 2004 8:48 AM Subject: [Hardhats-members] Linux question: Redhat 9 vs. Fedora 3? Hello all I have purchased a server for my office. A used Dell 2600 with 2 RAID logical drives. The first is composed of two 18 GB drives. The second is composed of six 146 GB drives. It uses a Perc 4/di RAID controller. I bought it used, and it came with Windows 2000 server installed. I want to change this to linux. Here is a web site that discussed supported versions of linux that work well with this computer. http://linux.dell.com/raid.shtml#megaraid-redhat I am trying to decide which version of linux to install. It looks like redhat 9 supports the RAID controller (per the above web site). But Fedora is newer and more likely to have ongoing support in the community. But perhaps it is more buggy? I'm also considering the Redhat enterprise version. I think the $300 support package gives web support with several day turnaround times for one year. The $800 is a little better. The only support I think I will need will be during the installation process. I'd be interested in the input of you all in the best way to go. Kevin __ Do you Yahoo!? Send holiday email and support a worthy cause. Do good. http://celebrity.mail.yahoo.com --- SF email is sponsored by - The IT Product Guide Read honest candid reviews on hundreds of IT Products from real users. Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now. http://productguide.itmanagersjournal.com/ ___ Hardhats-members mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members --- SF email is sponsored by - The IT Product Guide Read honest candid reviews on hundreds of IT Products from real users. Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now. http://productguide.itmanagersjournal.com/ ___ Hardhats-members mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members -- Nancy Anthracite --- SF email is sponsored by - The IT Product Guide Read honest candid reviews on hundreds of IT Products from real users. Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now. http://productguide.itmanagersjournal.com/ ___ Hardhats-members mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members
RE: [Hardhats-members] Linux question: Redhat 9 vs. Fedora 3?
I liked all the RPN HP calculators I've ever owned. I programmed in FORTH for a short time and it was all RPN -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Joseph Dal Molin Sent: Monday, December 13, 2004 12:03 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Hardhats-members] Linux question: Redhat 9 vs. Fedora 3? ...reminds me of Reverse Polish Notation for some reason... :-) Beza, Fil wrote: So what HP calls RAID 0+1 is RAID 10 (STRIPED MIRRORS) -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of K.S. Bhaskar Sent: Monday, December 13, 2004 11:50 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Hardhats-members] Linux question: Redhat 9 vs. Fedora 3? Yes, you can use RAID 01 (0+1 - mirrored stripes) or RAID 10 (1+0 - striped mirrors). See http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/levels/multLevel01-c.html RAID 5 protects against the loss of a disk, but has a performance penalty, so if disks are cheap and performance matters, RAID 01 or RAID 10 are better. But if performance is not important, as in a training system, then RAID 5 gives the most efficient use of disk space while protecting against the loss of any single disk. -- Bhaskar On Mon, 2004-12-13 at 14:13, Beza, Fil wrote: FWIW, on our VMS and NT systems, all our VistA production storage uses what HP calls RAID 0+1 Each disk is mirrored and mirrors (usually either 3 or 6) are used to form a STRIPESET. For example, my system has 18.2 Gb disk drives. 2 drives are used to form the mirror. Then I have six mirrors (12 disks) that form the stripeset for a total of 109 Gb per container. The mirroring guard against disk failure and striping for access speed. We use RAID 5 for non-production use like a test/training system, backup. ** ** *** This electronic mail transmission contains confidential and/or privileged information intended only for the person(s) named. Any use, distribution, copying or disclosure by another person is strictly prohibited. ** ** *** NOTE: Ce courriel est destine exclusivement au(x) destinataire(s) mentionne(s) ci-dessus et peut contenir de l'information privilegiee, confidentielle et/ou dispensee de divulgation aux termes des lois applicables. Si vous avez recu ce message par erreur, ou s'il ne vous est pas destine, veuillez le mentionner immediatement a l'expediteur et effacer ce courriel. --- SF email is sponsored by - The IT Product Guide Read honest candid reviews on hundreds of IT Products from real users. Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now. http://productguide.itmanagersjournal.com/ ___ Hardhats-members mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members --- SF email is sponsored by - The IT Product Guide Read honest candid reviews on hundreds of IT Products from real users. Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now. http://productguide.itmanagersjournal.com/ ___ Hardhats-members mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members . --- SF email is sponsored by - The IT Product Guide Read honest candid reviews on hundreds of IT Products from real users. Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now. http://productguide.itmanagersjournal.com/ ___ Hardhats-members mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members --- SF email is sponsored by - The IT Product Guide Read honest candid reviews on hundreds of IT Products from real users. Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now. http://productguide.itmanagersjournal.com/ ___ Hardhats-members mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members
RE: [Hardhats-members] Linux question: Redhat 9 vs. Fedora 3?
FWIW, on our VMS and NT systems, all our VistA production storage uses what HP calls RAID 0+1 Each disk is mirrored and mirrors (usually either 3 or 6) are used to form a STRIPESET. For example, my system has 18.2 Gb disk drives. 2 drives are used to form the mirror. Then I have six mirrors (12 disks) that form the stripeset for a total of 109 Gb per container. The mirroring guard against disk failure and striping for access speed. We use RAID 5 for non-production use like a test/training system, backup. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of K.S. Bhaskar Sent: Monday, December 13, 2004 11:00 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Hardhats-members] Linux question: Redhat 9 vs. Fedora 3? More ramblings, see below. -- Bhaskar On Mon, 2004-12-13 at 12:47, Kevin Toppenberg wrote: Bhaskar, I decided to partially run the Redhat 9 installer, to see what it would say about my drives. It automatically loaded the megaraid driver, as the dell website said it should. It comes up with: sda 17,273 MB MegaRAID LD0 RAID1 17278R sdb 559,584 MB MegaRAID LD1 RAID1 59592R So it looks like the first pair of 18 gb drives are in a RAID 1 config, and the 146 gb drives are arranged in a RAID 5 to give 559 gb of storage. 146x6=876gb, so the difference between 559 and 876 must be the redundancy of RAID 5. [KSB] Unfortunately, I have only read about RAID, and have never personally set up a RAID configuration. (For that matter, I am a manager, so I really don't do very much of anything. I tell my kids that I am the guy from Dilbert with the pointy hair... My real expertise may be in knowing when I am out of my depth!) For a production machine, where robustness really matters, it may be worthwhile hiring a Linux expert to help you configure the machine and make sure it's done right. Much as I like to do things myself, I have been known to call a plumber on occasion. I don't know whether Crawford's company offers this type of service. If not, I may be able to find you someone who moonlights. I would consider a RAID 10 rather than a RAID 5. RAID 5 space efficient, but slower than RAID 10. P.S. I'd kind of like to put this RH9 on the server. If it installs and it works, why not use it? I know that it is older and not supported, but the support I will need is during the install process. If I can get installed with RH9, then fine. Otherwise I can pay for RH EL3 with support. What do you think? [KSB] Post installation, the problem with an unsupported release like RH9 is that you won't get security patches for it. I do seem to remember that there is an outfit somewhere that offers patches for RH9. Although Linux is comparatively stable, secure and robust, you do need to ensure timely security patches. Kevin --- Kevin Toppenberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thanks everyone for your replies. Bhaskar, comments below: --- K.S. Bhaskar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Kevin -- For what they're worth, some random comments follow. http://linux.dell.com/storage.shtml is a good resource page. Your configuration is interesting (and less than ideal) in that more disks on the first controller would be better. But you have what you have. Are there any IDE disks? If so, consider putting the basic system files there. All the disks are the 10,000k SCSI disks (I believe). When I do a knoppix (Linux on a CDROM) boot, then type lspci I see an entry for IDE interface 82801CA Ultra ATA storage controller in addition to my RAID bus controller. So I'm not sure. Perc 4/Di controllers should have fast-write cache with battery backed RAM, so the controller RAM is considered non volatile. I don't know whether this is optional, but I would consider acquiring it if you don't have it. You will get better performance with a write back or fast write cache, but to use this feature, non-volatile memory in the controller, and a driver that supports the fast write cache are required. So it sounds like to change this, I would need to purchase a different hardware controller, right? I think I will stay with this for now unless speed becomes an issue. [KSB] You wouldn't need to purchase a new controller because the Perc 4/Di supposedly has fast write cache with non volatile RAM. But I don't know if that is standard or if you need to purchase an add-on option. In any case, the battery should be tested. I think these controllers may be fully supported out of the box with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, but not RHEL 2.x, but you should check about this. RHEL 3 may cost a few hundred dollars a year for support; if you don't want to spend the money, consider White Box Linux which is a workalike. I would not run a production system on Fedora Linux. Red Hat 9 is obsolete and I would not use that either
RE: [Hardhats-members] Linux question: Redhat 9 vs. Fedora 3?
Yes, you can use RAID 01 (0+1 - mirrored stripes) or RAID 10 (1+0 - striped mirrors). See http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/levels/multLevel01-c.html RAID 5 protects against the loss of a disk, but has a performance penalty, so if disks are cheap and performance matters, RAID 01 or RAID 10 are better. But if performance is not important, as in a training system, then RAID 5 gives the most efficient use of disk space while protecting against the loss of any single disk. -- Bhaskar On Mon, 2004-12-13 at 14:13, Beza, Fil wrote: FWIW, on our VMS and NT systems, all our VistA production storage uses what HP calls RAID 0+1 Each disk is mirrored and mirrors (usually either 3 or 6) are used to form a STRIPESET. For example, my system has 18.2 Gb disk drives. 2 drives are used to form the mirror. Then I have six mirrors (12 disks) that form the stripeset for a total of 109 Gb per container. The mirroring guard against disk failure and striping for access speed. We use RAID 5 for non-production use like a test/training system, backup. *** This electronic mail transmission contains confidential and/or privileged information intended only for the person(s) named. Any use, distribution, copying or disclosure by another person is strictly prohibited. *** NOTE: Ce courriel est destine exclusivement au(x) destinataire(s) mentionne(s) ci-dessus et peut contenir de l'information privilegiee, confidentielle et/ou dispensee de divulgation aux termes des lois applicables. Si vous avez recu ce message par erreur, ou s'il ne vous est pas destine, veuillez le mentionner immediatement a l'expediteur et effacer ce courriel. --- SF email is sponsored by - The IT Product Guide Read honest candid reviews on hundreds of IT Products from real users. Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now. http://productguide.itmanagersjournal.com/ ___ Hardhats-members mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members
Re: [Hardhats-members] Linux question: Redhat 9 vs. Fedora 3?
Fedora is for those who want to live on the bleeding edge of software releases, not for production sites! Debian 3.0r3 (a.k.a. Woody) is a fine choice for a production site. Debian testing (a.k.a. Sarge) is not recommended for production, but it has been stable for me at home, and I would consider using it in production - but I do sometimes live life more on the edge than I should. Debian unstable (a.k.a. Sid), is bleeding edge, and I don't use it. Installing Debian on hard disk via Knoppix (mostly Sarge with some packages from Sid - Crawford, please correct me if I lie) is reasonably stable, but not ideal for production, where you want to minimize the number of packages that are installed (the KISS principle). Fedora is probably somewhere between Sarge and Sid. -- Bhaskar On Mon, 2004-12-13 at 11:44, Nancy E. Anthracite wrote: My son and I had a discussion about Fedora Core 3 because our upgrade this time was less than smooth. I suspect that things will iron out rapidly, but be sure to do an update as soon as you install it if you use it. It might be that Fedora is moving a little to rapidly for a server like this and you would be better off with the Enterprise edition of RedHat. Raymond was considering the merits of Debian for a server. He is in the process of installing to see how it works out on one of his machines, but it apparently does not work with your machine, so that is out. *** This electronic mail transmission contains confidential and/or privileged information intended only for the person(s) named. Any use, distribution, copying or disclosure by another person is strictly prohibited. *** NOTE: Ce courriel est destine exclusivement au(x) destinataire(s) mentionne(s) ci-dessus et peut contenir de l'information privilegiee, confidentielle et/ou dispensee de divulgation aux termes des lois applicables. Si vous avez recu ce message par erreur, ou s'il ne vous est pas destine, veuillez le mentionner immediatement a l'expediteur et effacer ce courriel. --- SF email is sponsored by - The IT Product Guide Read honest candid reviews on hundreds of IT Products from real users. Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now. http://productguide.itmanagersjournal.com/ ___ Hardhats-members mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members
RE: [Hardhats-members] Linux question: Redhat 9 vs. Fedora 3?
So what HP calls RAID 0+1 is RAID 10 (STRIPED MIRRORS) -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of K.S. Bhaskar Sent: Monday, December 13, 2004 11:50 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Hardhats-members] Linux question: Redhat 9 vs. Fedora 3? Yes, you can use RAID 01 (0+1 - mirrored stripes) or RAID 10 (1+0 - striped mirrors). See http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/levels/multLevel01-c.html RAID 5 protects against the loss of a disk, but has a performance penalty, so if disks are cheap and performance matters, RAID 01 or RAID 10 are better. But if performance is not important, as in a training system, then RAID 5 gives the most efficient use of disk space while protecting against the loss of any single disk. -- Bhaskar On Mon, 2004-12-13 at 14:13, Beza, Fil wrote: FWIW, on our VMS and NT systems, all our VistA production storage uses what HP calls RAID 0+1 Each disk is mirrored and mirrors (usually either 3 or 6) are used to form a STRIPESET. For example, my system has 18.2 Gb disk drives. 2 drives are used to form the mirror. Then I have six mirrors (12 disks) that form the stripeset for a total of 109 Gb per container. The mirroring guard against disk failure and striping for access speed. We use RAID 5 for non-production use like a test/training system, backup. *** This electronic mail transmission contains confidential and/or privileged information intended only for the person(s) named. Any use, distribution, copying or disclosure by another person is strictly prohibited. *** NOTE: Ce courriel est destine exclusivement au(x) destinataire(s) mentionne(s) ci-dessus et peut contenir de l'information privilegiee, confidentielle et/ou dispensee de divulgation aux termes des lois applicables. Si vous avez recu ce message par erreur, ou s'il ne vous est pas destine, veuillez le mentionner immediatement a l'expediteur et effacer ce courriel. --- SF email is sponsored by - The IT Product Guide Read honest candid reviews on hundreds of IT Products from real users. Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now. http://productguide.itmanagersjournal.com/ ___ Hardhats-members mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members --- SF email is sponsored by - The IT Product Guide Read honest candid reviews on hundreds of IT Products from real users. Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now. http://productguide.itmanagersjournal.com/ ___ Hardhats-members mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members
Re: [Hardhats-members] Linux question: Redhat 9 vs. Fedora 3?
More ramblings, see below. -- Bhaskar On Mon, 2004-12-13 at 12:47, Kevin Toppenberg wrote: Bhaskar, I decided to partially run the Redhat 9 installer, to see what it would say about my drives. It automatically loaded the megaraid driver, as the dell website said it should. It comes up with: sda 17,273 MB MegaRAID LD0 RAID1 17278R sdb 559,584 MB MegaRAID LD1 RAID1 59592R So it looks like the first pair of 18 gb drives are in a RAID 1 config, and the 146 gb drives are arranged in a RAID 5 to give 559 gb of storage. 146x6=876gb, so the difference between 559 and 876 must be the redundancy of RAID 5. [KSB] Unfortunately, I have only read about RAID, and have never personally set up a RAID configuration. (For that matter, I am a manager, so I really don't do very much of anything. I tell my kids that I am the guy from Dilbert with the pointy hair... My real expertise may be in knowing when I am out of my depth!) For a production machine, where robustness really matters, it may be worthwhile hiring a Linux expert to help you configure the machine and make sure it's done right. Much as I like to do things myself, I have been known to call a plumber on occasion. I don't know whether Crawford's company offers this type of service. If not, I may be able to find you someone who moonlights. I would consider a RAID 10 rather than a RAID 5. RAID 5 space efficient, but slower than RAID 10. P.S. I'd kind of like to put this RH9 on the server. If it installs and it works, why not use it? I know that it is older and not supported, but the support I will need is during the install process. If I can get installed with RH9, then fine. Otherwise I can pay for RH EL3 with support. What do you think? [KSB] Post installation, the problem with an unsupported release like RH9 is that you won't get security patches for it. I do seem to remember that there is an outfit somewhere that offers patches for RH9. Although Linux is comparatively stable, secure and robust, you do need to ensure timely security patches. Kevin --- Kevin Toppenberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thanks everyone for your replies. Bhaskar, comments below: --- K.S. Bhaskar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Kevin -- For what they're worth, some random comments follow. http://linux.dell.com/storage.shtml is a good resource page. Your configuration is interesting (and less than ideal) in that more disks on the first controller would be better. But you have what you have. Are there any IDE disks? If so, consider putting the basic system files there. All the disks are the 10,000k SCSI disks (I believe). When I do a knoppix (Linux on a CDROM) boot, then type lspci I see an entry for IDE interface 82801CA Ultra ATA storage controller in addition to my RAID bus controller. So I'm not sure. Perc 4/Di controllers should have fast-write cache with battery backed RAM, so the controller RAM is considered non volatile. I don't know whether this is optional, but I would consider acquiring it if you don't have it. You will get better performance with a write back or fast write cache, but to use this feature, non-volatile memory in the controller, and a driver that supports the fast write cache are required. So it sounds like to change this, I would need to purchase a different hardware controller, right? I think I will stay with this for now unless speed becomes an issue. [KSB] You wouldn't need to purchase a new controller because the Perc 4/Di supposedly has fast write cache with non volatile RAM. But I don't know if that is standard or if you need to purchase an add-on option. In any case, the battery should be tested. I think these controllers may be fully supported out of the box with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, but not RHEL 2.x, but you should check about this. RHEL 3 may cost a few hundred dollars a year for support; if you don't want to spend the money, consider White Box Linux which is a workalike. I would not run a production system on Fedora Linux. Red Hat 9 is obsolete and I would not use that either. OK. Good advice. Thank you. The White Box Linux is interesting, but doesn't seem safe enough for this newbie (me). SuSE 9.x probably also has a driver that supports fast write cache, and current Debian releases probably also do, but you should check. A question you need to ask is whether you would like to purchase Linux support or support it yourself. I would configure the two 18GB drives as a RAID 1 (mirror), and put the database on it. I would configure the six 146GB drives as RAID 10 (stripe of mirrors) configuration if the controller permits it, and put the journal files on it, as well as the daily database backup. If you don't have separate
Re: [Hardhats-members] Linux question: Redhat 9 vs. Fedora 3?
...reminds me of Reverse Polish Notation for some reason... :-) Beza, Fil wrote: So what HP calls RAID 0+1 is RAID 10 (STRIPED MIRRORS) -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of K.S. Bhaskar Sent: Monday, December 13, 2004 11:50 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Hardhats-members] Linux question: Redhat 9 vs. Fedora 3? Yes, you can use RAID 01 (0+1 - mirrored stripes) or RAID 10 (1+0 - striped mirrors). See http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/levels/multLevel01-c.html RAID 5 protects against the loss of a disk, but has a performance penalty, so if disks are cheap and performance matters, RAID 01 or RAID 10 are better. But if performance is not important, as in a training system, then RAID 5 gives the most efficient use of disk space while protecting against the loss of any single disk. -- Bhaskar On Mon, 2004-12-13 at 14:13, Beza, Fil wrote: FWIW, on our VMS and NT systems, all our VistA production storage uses what HP calls RAID 0+1 Each disk is mirrored and mirrors (usually either 3 or 6) are used to form a STRIPESET. For example, my system has 18.2 Gb disk drives. 2 drives are used to form the mirror. Then I have six mirrors (12 disks) that form the stripeset for a total of 109 Gb per container. The mirroring guard against disk failure and striping for access speed. We use RAID 5 for non-production use like a test/training system, backup. *** This electronic mail transmission contains confidential and/or privileged information intended only for the person(s) named. Any use, distribution, copying or disclosure by another person is strictly prohibited. *** NOTE: Ce courriel est destine exclusivement au(x) destinataire(s) mentionne(s) ci-dessus et peut contenir de l'information privilegiee, confidentielle et/ou dispensee de divulgation aux termes des lois applicables. Si vous avez recu ce message par erreur, ou s'il ne vous est pas destine, veuillez le mentionner immediatement a l'expediteur et effacer ce courriel. --- SF email is sponsored by - The IT Product Guide Read honest candid reviews on hundreds of IT Products from real users. Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now. http://productguide.itmanagersjournal.com/ ___ Hardhats-members mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members --- SF email is sponsored by - The IT Product Guide Read honest candid reviews on hundreds of IT Products from real users. Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now. http://productguide.itmanagersjournal.com/ ___ Hardhats-members mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members . --- SF email is sponsored by - The IT Product Guide Read honest candid reviews on hundreds of IT Products from real users. Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now. http://productguide.itmanagersjournal.com/ ___ Hardhats-members mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members
Re: [Hardhats-members] Linux question: Redhat 9 vs. Fedora 3?
Thanks everyone for your replies. Bhaskar, comments below: --- K.S. Bhaskar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Kevin -- For what they're worth, some random comments follow. http://linux.dell.com/storage.shtml is a good resource page. Your configuration is interesting (and less than ideal) in that more disks on the first controller would be better. But you have what you have. Are there any IDE disks? If so, consider putting the basic system files there. All the disks are the 10,000k SCSI disks (I believe). When I do a knoppix (Linux on a CDROM) boot, then type lspci I see an entry for IDE interface 82801CA Ultra ATA storage controller in addition to my RAID bus controller. So I'm not sure. Perc 4/Di controllers should have fast-write cache with battery backed RAM, so the controller RAM is considered non volatile. I don't know whether this is optional, but I would consider acquiring it if you don't have it. You will get better performance with a write back or fast write cache, but to use this feature, non-volatile memory in the controller, and a driver that supports the fast write cache are required. So it sounds like to change this, I would need to purchase a different hardware controller, right? I think I will stay with this for now unless speed becomes an issue. I think these controllers may be fully supported out of the box with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, but not RHEL 2.x, but you should check about this. RHEL 3 may cost a few hundred dollars a year for support; if you don't want to spend the money, consider White Box Linux which is a workalike. I would not run a production system on Fedora Linux. Red Hat 9 is obsolete and I would not use that either. OK. Good advice. Thank you. The White Box Linux is interesting, but doesn't seem safe enough for this newbie (me). SuSE 9.x probably also has a driver that supports fast write cache, and current Debian releases probably also do, but you should check. A question you need to ask is whether you would like to purchase Linux support or support it yourself. I would configure the two 18GB drives as a RAID 1 (mirror), and put the database on it. I would configure the six 146GB drives as RAID 10 (stripe of mirrors) configuration if the controller permits it, and put the journal files on it, as well as the daily database backup. If you don't have separate IDE disks for the Linux system and the routines, I would also put the root filesystem on this. I don't know how to setup the RAID configuration. My understanding is that one can use a software RAID or a hardware RAID. It apprears to me that this is a hardware RAID. When I boot up, it gives me an option to go into the RAID controller bios and change the setup. When I look at the configuration, it just tells me what disks are connected to the controller. It has RAID Ch-0 with the two 18 gb drives, and then RAID Ch-1 with the other 6 drives. I don't know if I could swap one of the disks from Ch-0 to Ch-1 or not. I don't see anywhere an option to specify with RAID configuration. There is a NEW CONFIGURATION option that I am afraid to go into, for fear of overwriting my current setup. I've not worked with RAID drives before, so I'm a bit unsure here. This is one of the reasons that I will need a linux version that automatically detects all this for me and sets it up properly. When I boot the server with Knoppix, it detects and mounts 6 hard drives--sda1 (16.8GB),sda2 (31GB) have NTFS data and files, sdb1-sdb4 (3.4mb each) look empty. This doesn't seem to coorelate with my actual physical drives, so I am further confused. What do you plan for backup (to get a copy of the daily backup off the machine)? Do you have a CD/DVD-ROM writer or a tape drive attached to the machine? The server box has a USB in back, and I thought I would purchase an external DVD writer. Though I don't know if linux will support this. What would a required backup schedule look like with RAID drives? Would I still need daily backups? How about if I get that 2nd PC going as a mirror that you mentioned? Would I still need backups? Do you have any suggestions regarding media? WHen you go into production, remember to manage (archive / delete) your journal files so that you don't run out of disk space. I'll need to read about this. Don't discard the Windows 2000 license. There may be some interesting things to do with it. I don't know how to save it. Microsoft doesn't seem too helpful on this point. For example, on my PC at home with Windows XP, I ended up having to purchase another license because it wouldn't recognize the on the hard drive. The data was there, just the boot sequence was gone. For your next project, you can acquire a charming cheapie box from Staples / Best Buy / Walmart for a backup machine in case the first machine immolates itself... You can set up a streaming update from the production
Re: [Hardhats-members] Linux question: Redhat 9 vs. Fedora 3?
Kevin -- For what they're worth, some random comments follow. http://linux.dell.com/storage.shtml is a good resource page. Your configuration is interesting (and less than ideal) in that more disks on the first controller would be better. But you have what you have. Are there any IDE disks? If so, consider putting the basic system files there. Perc 4/Di controllers should have fast-write cache with battery backed RAM, so the controller RAM is considered non volatile. I don't know whether this is optional, but I would consider acquiring it if you don't have it. You will get better performance with a write back or fast write cache, but to use this feature, non-volatile memory in the controller, and a driver that supports the fast write cache are required. I think these controllers may be fully supported out of the box with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, but not RHEL 2.x, but you should check about this. RHEL 3 may cost a few hundred dollars a year for support; if you don't want to spend the money, consider White Box Linux which is a workalike. I would not run a production system on Fedora Linux. Red Hat 9 is obsolete and I would not use that either. SuSE 9.x probably also has a driver that supports fast write cache, and current Debian releases probably also do, but you should check. A question you need to ask is whether you would like to purchase Linux support or support it yourself. I would configure the two 18GB drives as a RAID 1 (mirror), and put the database on it. I would configure the six 146GB drives as RAID 10 (stripe of mirrors) configuration if the controller permits it, and put the journal files on it, as well as the daily database backup. If you don't have separate IDE disks for the Linux system and the routines, I would also put the root filesystem on this. What do you plan for backup (to get a copy of the daily backup off the machine)? Do you have a CD/DVD-ROM writer or a tape drive attached to the machine? WHen you go into production, remember to manage (archive / delete) your journal files so that you don't run out of disk space. Don't discard the Windows 2000 license. There may be some interesting things to do with it. For your next project, you can acquire a charming cheapie box from Staples / Best Buy / Walmart for a backup machine in case the first machine immolates itself... You can set up a streaming update from the production machine to the secondary, which can be somewhere off site. Good luck. Let me know if I can offer any further (potentially useless) advice. And keep us posted. -- Bhaskar On Mon, 2004-12-13 at 09:48, Kevin Toppenberg wrote: Hello all I have purchased a server for my office. A used Dell 2600 with 2 RAID logical drives. The first is composed of two 18 GB drives. The second is composed of six 146 GB drives. It uses a Perc 4/di RAID controller. I bought it used, and it came with Windows 2000 server installed. I want to change this to linux. Here is a web site that discussed supported versions of linux that work well with this computer. http://linux.dell.com/raid.shtml#megaraid-redhat I am trying to decide which version of linux to install. It looks like redhat 9 supports the RAID controller (per the above web site). But Fedora is newer and more likely to have ongoing support in the community. But perhaps it is more buggy? I'm also considering the Redhat enterprise version. I think the $300 support package gives web support with several day turnaround times for one year. The $800 is a little better. The only support I think I will need will be during the installation process. I'd be interested in the input of you all in the best way to go. Kevin *** This electronic mail transmission contains confidential and/or privileged information intended only for the person(s) named. Any use, distribution, copying or disclosure by another person is strictly prohibited. *** NOTE: Ce courriel est destine exclusivement au(x) destinataire(s) mentionne(s) ci-dessus et peut contenir de l'information privilegiee, confidentielle et/ou dispensee de divulgation aux termes des lois applicables. Si vous avez recu ce message par erreur, ou s'il ne vous est pas destine, veuillez le mentionner immediatement a l'expediteur et effacer ce courriel. --- SF email is sponsored by - The IT Product Guide Read honest candid reviews on hundreds of IT Products from real users. Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now. http://productguide.itmanagersjournal.com/ ___ Hardhats-members mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members
