[CentOS] Wait for 5 or just use 4.4?

Sat Mar 31 22:30:06 UTC 2007
John Summerfield <debian at herakles.homelinux.org>

Cen Tos wrote:
> On 3/31/07, John R Pierce <pierce at hogranch.com> wrote:
> 
>>
>> thats a desktop motherboard, not really what I'd consider 'server'
>> grade.   Now, if this is just a SOHO 'server', that may not matter, but
>> if this is going into a colocation site to host production websites, I'd
>> want a 1U or 2U server with niceties like hotswap hard drives, redundant
>> power supplies, and ECC memory, perhaps one of the Tyan or SuperMicro
>> servers.
>>
> 
> This is going into a 4U chassis with redundant PSU and hotswap :) The
> remaining hardware is largely constrained by budget. But of course, if
> anybody has a better suggestion for a reasonably priced board from Asus or
> Gigabyte that has two NIC, supports Core 2 Duo and ECC with onboard
> graphics, I'm all game :)
> 
> Tyan & SuperMicro are out because it would take the local reseller like a
> week or two to get the board, I don't want to know what will happen if the
> board dies. It's far safer and cheaper for me to keep a spare desktop board
> from Asus/Gigabyte. I  have close to zero confidence in Abit boards, little
> confidence in product quality and after sales support of other brands
> distributors in my local area. If this wasn't for a server, I would pick an
> MSI board for cheap pricing and excellent local support.
> 
> On another issue, I feel that generic 1P servers are more defined by the
> redundancy features than the board itself. Raid, Hotswap drives and
> redundant power supplies are more crucial than the board. I've clients who
> ran lan gaming shops and I supplied them easily thousands of systems over
> the past few years. Although they don't run 24/7 like servers, the 12~16
> hours or so they are in operation tend to see much more intensive usage
> compared to what I'm expecting on this setup. Relatively few boards have
> died  compared to numerous fans, drives and power supplies.
> 
> Hence even if I can get the budget for it, I'd rather spend it on a standby
> system, and do this HA heartbeat thing I've been reading up, than spend it
> on an expensive board from Tyan/SuperMicro.


I recently read a Goot Trick, might even have been on this list. Bloke 
has software raid configured involving two internal drives and one 
firewire (I expect USB 2 would do as well).

He attaches drive, syncs the RAID, removes it. Takes it away for offsite 
backup.

I already new of some of the ideas here:
http://lcic.org/ha.html
and my preference is DRBD, but I'd have to redo the research. There's 
also enbd, which requires a kernel patch, but then my research there's 
pretty old too. nbd is in the standard kernel source.




-- 

Cheers
John

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