> Has anyone tried out the new ultra160 scsi?
Nope. ; )
> Since qmail is disk I/O bound I'm interested in hearing
> or discussing the advantages of a ultra160 machine.
In my opinion, I really don't think it's going to be as large of an
increase as you think for a single drive, because even though the spec says
that the *maximum* transfer rate is a huge, huge number, the drive itself
isn't going to put that much out for more than a very, very short-lived
burst.
The real, difficult bottleneck to beat is the bandwidth of your SCSI bus -
which this will certainly raise to huge levels. However, in order to get
near the limits of the SCSI bus, you're probably going to have to put a good
number of drives in your array. You'll have to research the specs on the
drives available to you (actual transfer rate, seek time, capacity, price,
etc.), and decide how you can get the most bang for your buck. Depending on
your budget and what's available to you, the 'best' bet can either be a
small number of larger drives, or a large number of smaller drives. One
thing is certain, though, the more drives you have in the array (within
reason, of course), the more total transfer you're going to see, all other
factors being equal.
steve
