[CentOS] Need advice on storage

boisvert.guy at videotron.ca boisvert.guy at videotron.ca
Wed Nov 14 12:39:43 UTC 2007


----- Message d'origine -----De: "redhat at mckerrs.net" <redhat at mckerrs.net>Date: Mardi, Novembre 13, 2007 2:01 amObjet: Re: Re : Re: Re : Re: [CentOS] Need advice on storageÀ: CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org>> > ----- Original Message ----- > As you said, i'm in a case where migrating system drive to a > RAID 5 array wouldn't be easy. > > But i have a new possible solution that arosed when i went to > see the physical system tonight: There is a Promise VTRAK 15100 > SCSI enclosure in the rack with a free SCSI bus and space to put > new SATA drives inside. I think we have a spare Adaptec 39160 so > tomorrow, i'll check that (it's a PCI-X card but i think it > should work PCI too). If i have the Adaptec, then i'll probably > buy 4 x Western-Digital 250 Gigs "YS" (RAID serie) @ about 75$ > each, put them inside the VTRAK and configure them in RAID 10 > for a total of 500 Gigs. I briefly checked the VTRAK > documentation and they were talking about "up to 200 MBps" > throughput and support for NCQ. It remains to be seems how it > could perform with 4 disks in RAID 10. But it should easily beat > a single 200 Gigs IDE drive! > > For now, i did hdparm -t /dev/hdc (stoopid IDE mail drive!) and > it gave me 38.21 MB/sec. > > Thanks! > > Guy Boisvert > > > -- > > Nice kit to have lying around doing nothing ! > > > The PCI-X SCSI card should work in the asus board, but It'll run > as 32bit PCI and therefor your performance will be a maximum of > 128mb/s as that is the theoretical maximum throughput of the > 32bit PCI bus. Given that your NIC and 80gb IDE system hdd are > on the same PCI bus you will be lucky to get 75mb/s I'd say. But > that's almost twice as good as you are currently getting ! > > Good luck. >Thanks for  your input!Actually, the VTrak has 2 independants SCSI Bus and the Winblows fileserver is connected on bus 1.  The bus 2 is free so i can use it.  And there are about 8 free SATA slots free (out of 15).  So this big VTrak unit uses SATA drives and the external interfaces are SCSI.The only thing i dunno for now is the impact on overall performance using 2 servers on the 2 buses.  Is the VTrak controller non blocking?  I'll know soon.As for the PCI bus, you're totally right.  This little crappy mainboard was not engineered to be of server class!  But as i said in a previous post, this little server took more and more job on the go.It does:FTP Server (vsftp)SSH Gateway for road warriors (Transport of Terminal Services Sessions. about 3-4 simul sessions avg)Communigate Server with MAPI connector for about 40-45 users along with WEBMail access (SSL)Sassafras Keyserver for software licences controlBackup server for Winblows file server  and Communigate (rsync snapshots, 900 Gigs used out of 1.2T)  All that with an Athlon XP 2500+, 1 Gig ram.  The single 7200 RPM IDE non NCQ is a big part of the bottleneck.So, i'd like to change the server but i won't be able until the new budget and i was asked to try to stretch its life with low budget.  Fortunately, i saw the free VTrak bus and SATA slots!  And i was really lucky that we had an Adaptec 39160 on shelf that was supposed to go elsewhere.I'm very pleased with CentOS 4.  I'm always saying good things about CentOS around me and i often mention that we should all contribute with money to keep this project alive and healthy.  I'd like to contribute with code too but the last line of C code i wrote was on a Sun Sparcstaion 10 about 10-12 years ago!Guy BoisvertP.S.: Sorry for the bad post layout but i'm using my provider's WEBMail (i'm away) and it's really not on par with Thunderbird i usually use...
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20071114/4fcde866/attachment.html>


More information about the CentOS mailing list