Be careful when selecting a Serial ATA server. There are a ton of SATA chipsets, some of which are not supported so well. In a 2.4 kernel your ONLY reliable bet is the Intel ICH5R (but not using its raid function via the bios). This controller shows up as hde to hdh.
In 2.6 you can use both the ICH5R and Silicon Image 311(2|4) chipsets. SATA devices are now scsi devices. You'll wanna use the latest kernel possible as the 2.6.5 (fedora core 2 base kernel) can be buggy, especially w/ Silicon Image controllers.
As for vendors which sell stuff.. I don't pay much attention to the specific implementations of tier one companies (although I can tell you which company in Taiwan each vendor buys their gear from). I work for a tier two company, Western Scientific, based in San Diego, CA. If your looking for a Opteron machines I'd recommend using IWill DK8S2-SATA (server) or DK8X (workstation) motherboards. For Xeon (533 or 800MHz) any SuperMicro motherboard should work fine (if they have the ICH5R chipset).
Currently 400GB Hitachi drives are stable and fast. 500GB drives are coming.. but are not ready yet. 250GB drives provide the best MB/$ price point.
-Mike
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On Thu, 24 Feb 2005, Mike Marion wrote:
Quoting "Andrew P. Lentvorski, Jr." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
Has anybody seen any of the big boys (Sun, HP, Dell, IBM, etc.) providing an Opteron machine which uses Serial ATA?
All of the systems I have seen seem to be SCSI-based. As these are going to be compute servers that need large scratch spaces, SCSI makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. I'd really like to get Serial-ATA instead and be able to buy a 200-300GB scratch drive rather than a "measly" 137GB drive.
I'm pretty sure that HP is about to come out with versions of their 1U opteron
box with SATA.
You could always get white box with Tyan boards, or just 3ware cards for SATA.
We've gotten some 2Us with 3wares for hw raid. My new server at home has a
Tyan board with SATA on it.. but I went nuts and got a 3ware card and 4x200Gig
sata disks that I raid-1'd. Got all my email, web stuff, family email,
photos, etc.. so I'm protecting that stuff. :D
-- Mike Marion-Unix SysAdmin/Staff Engineer-http://www.miguelito.org Marge: "Homer, sitting that close to the TV can't be good for you." Homer: "Talking while the TV's on can't be good for you!" ==> Simpsons
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