My next toy, but how to build it?

[SirKenin]

I would like to stack HDD's in a raid config in their own separate case. I don't know how to build it, what is available nor how much it would cost.

Any idea what hardware I would need? I want this to be the main drives for the entire network of computers. I have Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Windows XP workstations.

The next project after that will be building a Linux firewall to hook up to all this. That shouldn't prove to be too difficult.

Thanks in advance.

[DougLite]

You can get pre assembled ones that are quite pricey. You can also visit the good folks at Case Modding (http://www.hardforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=13) and they will give you great ideas you would never think of.

How many clients do you have? If you've got more than 20 people hammering the drives at the same time, an ATA drive will falter pretty quickly. If you've got upwards of 100 users working on them you are going to want to look real seriously at 15K drives.

You might be able to get a Fibre Channel setup going, or you can stick with U320 SCSI. Serially Attached SCSI is another possibility, and that will allow you to integrate SATA-II drives such as the MaxLineIII for nearline storage on the same bus. If you are going to be serving heavy multi user loads, you will obviously want fault tolerance - probably RAID 10/0+1, spanned across multiple channels or ideally controllers to ensure that the system remains available despite individual component failures. You will also find yourself looking at tape backup, but you probably already knew that. Post back with what kind of load you expect and of course a budget, and we'll see what we can do.

[SirKenin]

I have three workstations and one server in my office. The load won't be too heavy on it, so the MaxlineIII's would suffice I would think.

The question is, where do I take it from there?