[TriLUG] seeking HW recommendations -- byo RAID systems

[Ed Hill]

Hi folks,

I recently built (OK, threw together) a couple of 1--2TB array systems
with 300GB WD 5400rpm drives and 3ware PATA RAID cards.  Given the
franken-box nature of the systems (built from the failed nodes of one of
our clusters), I'm happy that they work and thrilled that they seem to
get good performance (>100MB/s sustained writes with RAID0).

So now I'd like to either buy or build a few more and want to maximize
our bang-for-buck in storage capacity.  I like the 3ware "raid drive
cages":

  http://www.3ware.com/products/ata.asp

and want to assemble boxes with 2--4 of these cages per box.  Can anyone
recommend a motherboard that has the following features:

  - works nicely with Linux (preferably, a 2.6.x kernel)
  - 2+ 64bit PCI adapters
  - 1--2 on-board GigE adapters
  - relatively cheap (we do NOT need dual CPUs)

and does anyone have a favorite server case (rack-mount or not) that
would work for this purpose?

Or should we just buy pre-built RAID systems?  I'm fond of the idea of
building our own since it seems significantly cheaper.  And we don't
need the dual-CPU power/expense that most turn-key RAID systems provide.

Ed

-- 
Edward H. Hill III, PhD
office:  MIT Dept. of EAPS;  Rm 54-1424;  77 Massachusetts Ave.
             Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
emails:  eh3 at mit.edu                ed at eh3.com
URLs:    http://web.mit.edu/eh3/    http://eh3.com/
phone:   617-253-0098
fax:     617-253-4464
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