Andrew Lentvorski wrote:
> Neil Schneider wrote:
>>> More RAM is good for virtualization. Given that we are a Linux
>>> user group, having a machine capable of fully running Xen is
>>> probably a good thing.
>>
>> Might be cool, but I don't know what we would use virtualization
>> for.
>
> You can upgrade and migrate between instances when we need to install
> new versions rather than praying the reboot will work. That's the big
> one. And, if the new one doesn't work, you just turn the old instance
> back on.
OK, I hadn't thought about using it that way. That seems worthwhile,
if we have the resources.
>> Well, once we have enough RAM installed, we may find that drive IO
>> is
>> the bottleneck, which is usually is. I would prefer we spend our
>> money on something that won't need to be replaced or upgraded for a
>> few years.
>
> Clarify, please.
The current system has been in place for a long time. I'm thinking
nearly 5 years, but nobody seems to remember for sure. I know it was
built when the system was still at ciarrai.net.
Though it's a little slow now, it has served us well. I opted for the
best IO we could afford (scsi) and skimped a little on the CPU. That
was what I meant above. Trade fast CPU for fast IO in the
specification of the system. We don't really need 64 bit, but we do
need fast IO.
> At this point, SATA-2 has better throughput than SCSI. *Each* disk
> gets
> a 300MB/s connection. To beat that you need FC-AL 4Gb or Ultra
> 640-SCSI.
>
> The drives are 7200 RPM. The benefit there is less heat and more
> capacity. If we go with SCSI 10K's, the heat goes up. However, you
> can
> get 10K SATA-2 drives. Now, if you *really* want 15K's, that's
> different.
Does anyone have a list of motherboards, preferably ASUS or TYAN that
have controllers compatible with these SATA-2 drives?
> Finally, just about any software RAID solution is going to stomp all
> over just about any inexpensive hardware RAID solution. In addition,
> it
> is *much* more compatible when we finally do decide to upgrade.
Sounds like they have drastically improved software RAID since I last
set it up. When I setup software raid, if you didn't have copious
notes on the configuration, you would never be able to recover the
failure of a disk.
--
Neil Schneider pacneil_at_linuxgeek_dot_net
http://www.paccomp.com
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