Hi All I have been asked to advise on the installation of Debian on a new Dell server.
The client is keen on a "PowerEdge 2800". From their spec this has a "PERC4" SCSI raid controller on board. From what I can see "PERC3" used an Adaptec chipset which is well supported in the latest kernels. Does anybody know about "PERC4"? Can this controller be used to setup a "hardware" RAID 5 array using 4 drives? Will this perform better than a Linux software RAID 5 configuration? If they chose RAID 5, is it a good idea to spec an additional drive for a boot/root partition? Should this boot/root drive be mirrored with an additional drive (ie RAID 1)? The system is to be used to run a MySQL database and PHP application. My suggestion is to use two drives in a software RAID 1 mirror, and beef up the RAM and spec dual processors (drive capacity is not an issue). The initial loading on the server will not be too great but they want to plan for expansion. I have suggested they buy a cheaper machine now and upgrade when their load picks up. Thanks for your comments Regards Ian -- Ian Forbes ZSD http://www.zsd.co.za Office: +27 21 683-1388 Fax: +27 21 674-1106 Snail Mail: P. O. Box 46827, Glosderry, 7702, South Africa
