[CentOS] Re: Opteron Mobo Suggestions -- the follies of typical tape backup (it's the 21st century)

[Peter Arremann]

On Friday 24 June 2005 01:30, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
> What I was stating was that you _never_ want to use "consumer" buses for
> server storage.  Despite Apple's insistence that FireWire is server-
> grade, they've had lots of issues.  Yes, it's better than USB and far
> more intelligent (e.g., USB can't do device-to-device, FireWire can).
Completelty off topic but USB 2.0 has optional peering support- its called 
OTG.

> > Are you saying that USB/1394 hot-plugging is unstable or unreliable?
> > Do you possibly have any articles to point to?
>
> I've have had to take baseball bats to people with Mac XServe as well as
> PC servers running both Linux and Windows over the last 2 years because
> they keep plugging in FireWire and USB devices and wonder why their
> servers crash.  Not even Apple has perfected FireWire as a replacement
> for SCSI on _servers_.
There is tons of evidence out there to show how unsuitable Firewire is for a 
server environment. Basicly, it is easily possible with enough devices to 
find a combination of server/disk that will work. But if you just pick any 
random device you're pretty sure to get into trouble. 

Just look at those comments from the Apple universe. One good example is 
Softraid - they put an FAQ out there about their firewire issues 
(http://www.softraid.com/faq.html#firewire) with older hardware... Other than 
that just look at google and see how many search results you'll get :-)

Peter.