If you're not going to stripe multiple volumes, why do you need a RAID
controller? Any decent OS these days with a UBC will cache as much data
as possible, so I would not expect too much more performance from a single
drive, and a modern OS.
FreeBSD with softupdates would probably work just peachy, with 98% of the
performance, and less cost.
On Tue, 3 Aug 1999, Cris Daniluk wrote:
> Thank you for all the invaluable input. Personally I have a great deal of
> Linux/freebsd/qmail experience, though my qmail knowledge is quite limited
> to the extent of volume email such as this. Linux I think is the forerunner
> because I will not be dealing with the project after it is setup and
> therefore ease of administration is important.
>
> I have to throw in one more question, albeit somewhat off topic, it has
> definite relevance. We're going to put in a raid controller with a hell of a
> cache in it (64 mb probably). My question then is, what type of disk
> configuration would you propose we need? Space needs are virtually
> nonexistant, the machines sole purpose will be mail. Probably 100 mb for the
> system itself and then the rest will be for the queue. I'd figure a raid
> controller with 64mb cache and a 4.5 gb Cheetah would do the job. Do you
> feel that striping and multiple drives would be valuable?
>
> Also, our pipe is not going to be a bottleneck--everything is set up on a
> 100mbit lan with a T3 connection to the Internet. The t3 runs directy to
> level3's backbone in DC which we are a few miles from, so there should be no
> significant or relevant latency.
>
> Thanks again,
>
> Cris Daniluk
>
>
