[TriLUG] seeking HW recommendations -- byo RAID systems

[Jason Tower]

there aren't a whole lot of motherboards with dual gig-e and 64-bit pci 
slots, certainly not inexpensive ones.  by the time you get one, a big 
case, high capacity power supply, CPU, ram, etc. you're looking at a 
fairly hefty price tag.

my suggestion is to find a slightly older server (most have 64-bit pci 
slots, and often dual or gig-e ethernet) and use that instead of trying 
to roll your own.  you'll get lots of disk space, solid power supplies, 
good cooling, etc, without trying to reinvent the wheel yourself.  let 
us know how it turns out!

jason

On Saturday 08 May 2004 13:05, Ed Hill wrote:
> 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