On Saturday 31 October 2009, Michael Evans wrote:
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Michael Evans <mjevans1...@gmail.com>
> Date: Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 7:24 PM
> Subject: Re: [SLL] OT: NEC SAN
> To: John Aldrich <jmaldr...@yahoo.com>
>
> On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 2:50 PM, John Aldrich <jmaldr...@yahoo.com>
wrote:
> > On Friday 30 October 2009, you wrote:
> > > What are your needs and what product are you currently thinking of
> > > filling them with?
> >
> > Oh, and we're looking at starting out with about 2-3 Terabytes of
> > storage available and possibly adding another 2-3 Terabytes later on,
> > probably topping out at about 5 Terabytes.
>
> If you want hardware solutions that can be build with off the shelf
> technology:
>
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816103099 The
> controllers start at around $550 It uses a PCI-Express x8 slot and has
> 8 ports for drives. You could build a raid 6 set out of 5x1TB drives
> and fulfill your final target size; it still has two slots left for
> hot-spares.
>
> You could also use 1.5+tb drives in a raid 1+0 set or other similar
> solutions.
>
> Home. <http://www.newegg.com/Index.aspx?name=Home> > Computer
> Hardware0_.<http://www.newegg.com/Store/Computer.aspx?name=Computer-Hard
> ware>
>
> > Hard
> > Drives1_.<http://www.newegg.com/Store/Category.aspx?Category=15&name=
> >Hard-Drives> Controllers / RAID
>
> Cards2_.<http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=410&na
> me=Controllers-RAID-Cards>
>
> > *Internal Connectors[8 x SATA II ],Internal Connectors[16x SATA II
>
> ],Internal Connectors[12x SATA II ],Internal Connectors[24 x SATA II
> ],Internal Connectors[8 x SAS ],Internal Connectors[16 x SAS ],Internal
> Connectors[12 x SAS ],Internal Connectors[24 x SAS
> ],Interface[PCI-Express x8 ],* returned *11* results.
>
>
> If performance isn't as important as solution cost software raid
> (linux/bsd/windows all support variants) may be sufficient.
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132003 So you
> can support a few extra drives.
>
> Raid 1+0 based solutions have virtually no CPU overhead; raid 5/6
> solutions, in my experience, are quite effective for large rarely
> changed files (mythtv backend as an example).
>
> Software raid is, slowly, getting better. The recenly released mdadm
> 3.1 software supports reshaping raid5 to raid6. However if you require
> absolute performance hardware controllers are still the way to go.
>
>
> Compared to potentially much more expensive and difficult to support
> solutions: http://www.google.com/products?q=nec+D3+controller you may be
> better off building your own box entirely.
>
> Looking at motherboards on newegg it's a little difficult to find an
> explicitly -server- motherboard that fulfills your needs, however many
> desktop solutions exist, and there were a few server solutions that
> looked semi-useful.
>
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131596
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131134
>
>
> Oh, and in case you're wondering about all the newegg links. There's no
> relationship or anything like that; they just have the best set of tools
> for narrowing down products and usually have prices that are, if not
> the lowest, low enough to make going with a known good retailer better
> than chancing a unknown second party.
>
thanks. I'm a big fan of NewEgg myself. :-) I didn't care much for their
server stuff...not a lot there. :-( I appreciate the info and I'll keep that
in mind. There's something to be said for having someone else on the hook
for helping support the equipment. :-)
