• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

2 external SATA controllers for this (these) setup(s)?

S

shawngibson

Weaksauce
Joined
Dec 21, 2005
Messages
78
After a whole disaster went down with my initial purchase for the new system, it gave me a chance to rethink my case/drive arrangement, for a Photoshop workstation, and a server for files and some web stuff.

I ended up ordering a pair of Supermicro units each with 8 SATA hot swaps. Perfect, It was the way I wanted in the beginning anyways (8 drives).

Now, All speculating aside, I need to figure out if what I am planning really will work. I really want the bottlenecks for both computers (dual Opteron 254s for PS machine, dual 252s for the server) reduced. My PS files are huge. And I'll be hosting at least 2 personal and 2 'professional' artist's sites...and hopefully will get some work too:)

PHOTOSHOP MACHINE:

1 4xRAID controller (2x2 drives):
OS&APPS: RAID 0+1 on 2 Raptors
PS Scratch: RAID 0 on 2 Raptors

1 4xRAID controller (i.e., another one):
Temporary files-in-use: RAID 0+1 on 2 Raptors
Page: RAID 0 on 2 Raptors

SERVER:

1 4xRAID controller (2x2 drives):
OS&APPS: RAID 0+1 on 2 Raptors
Page: RAID 0 on 2 Raptors

1 4xRAID controller (2x2 drives):
2 7200 SATAs 250GB RAID 0+1 (my work + data)
2 7200 SATAs 250GB RAID 0+1 (another person's work + data)

I'm sure that's a clear as mud. :(

Is this going to work? If so, what controllers do you recommend?

I have not committed to motherboards yet. I HAD, but that fell apart since the company I dealt with were dwarf freak liars and even better, it gives me the chance to buy from someone on this board:)

Thanks guys for any help at making this most crazy (and unintelligible for me) part come together.

Shawn
 
You can't do raid 0+1 on 2 drives. That would take 4 minimum, or an even number. Building a *few* raid 0+1 or 0 arrays makes sense, but I don't think you need it for everything - make a raid 6 to store files on in the long term.

Supermicro for the boards, Areca for the raid cards. More expensive but worth it.

 
Well, if you're comfortable with it, Linux Software Raid has made great improvements in 2.6.15, and running raid5 off of a simple promise TX4 can work well. I've used and seen it for low-load websites in the past, and it may be appropriate for your needs. Then again, I usually work under an absurdly tight budget and you may have greater freedom to buy real raid.
 
Thanks unhappy.

OK, well that's enough to get me at least going to buy the 4 controllers (and validates my thought that SM boards would be good...or Gigabyte's new board...but SM seems safer with cables and chassis airflow etc. from what I've heard).

I'll get the 4 controllers, knowing I can do SOMETHING decent (2 controllers on each computer just seems to me like if 2 things are happening on different controllers, there's no bottleneck, i.e., even with 2 RAID setups if they are both on 1 controller, then...well...don't make much sense).

Makes sense in MY head, even if, again, it's clear as mud. I have to read more on the 0+1, I thought it was m+s on 2 drives...my bad.

edit: sorry Tilde, missed your post as I was posting. I'm pretty sure I'll be running Win 2003/64 (+php/mysql/apache...the only setup I'm comfortable with)...and for the insane money I am spending on all this, it just behooves me to suck up hardware controllers...What's another month or so on the build when it's already gonna take at least 6 months to buy everything?

Shawn
 
OK, so...PhotoShop computer needs 2 PCI-E free for video (definitely 1, but 2 is good for future).

That means, out of the Supermicro options, I have the following as the best motherboard option for using external controllers:

H8DCi:
2PCI-E x16
1 PCI-E x4 (using x8 slot)
2 64-bit PCI-X 133/100Mhz
etc.

OR

H8DCE:
2PCI-E x16
2 PCI-E x4 (using x8 slots)
etc.
...and superfluous onboard 8 SATA controller

I would GUESS the best option is the H8DCi because it doesn't have any crap to bungle up...but that leads me to the question, since I don't know quite how this works:

What's faster: (2 64-bit PCI-X 133/100Mhz) OR (2 PCI-E x4 [using x8 slots])?

These are otherwise identically-configured boards on paper, with the exception that the i, in addition to nVidia 2200 and 2050, has also AMD 8132 PCI-X Tunnel...which is so much jibberish to me, unfortunately.

What are your recommendations, if you don't mind, please?

Thanks as always...still a noob here...but learning.

Shawn
 
shawngibson said:
I would GUESS the best option is the H8DCi because it doesn't have any crap to bungle up...but that leads me to the question, since I don't know quite how this works:

What's faster: (2 64-bit PCI-X 133/100Mhz) OR (2 PCI-E x4 [using x8 slots])?
Click to expand...
The h8dce is a very nice board. And since you're only doing raid 0 or 1, the onboard controller should suffice. I'd at least try it out before dropping a few hundred bucks on a controller.

Pci express is 2.5 gbit/sec per lane, with 8/10b coding. Thus the total user bandwidth is 1 GB (1000MB)/sec for an x4 slot. Pci-X is calculated as follows: bit width * sample rate = speed. So 64 bits (8 bytes) * 133 mHz = 1064 mbytes/sec. They're very close, in other words. Pci Express will give you more future expandability, but there are some issues with it now IIRC. Some x8 cards not working in x4 or x16 slots. Pci-X is stable technology.

The AMD 8132 is a PCI-X chipset. The Nforce4 server chipset is in two pieces (the 2200 and 2050), with the 2050 optional. Those each have 20 pci express lanes, the 2200 has other useful things like USB and such. The 8132 just adds pci-x interface capability. I don't think it's technically part of the nforce4 chipset, but it (and the older brother, the 8131) gets used along with the nf4 a lot because it's a good match.

Hope that clears things up a bit.

 
That does, clears everything up. Thanks a lot!

I'll do it this way, get 2 H8DCEs and start with 1 external controller on each, so that if 2 things that happen often go on (paging and OS use, say, or PS and scratch) i can split them up using the controller and what's onboard. Cuts the price of controllers in half, and still ensures I'll usually have 2 controllers splitting things up nicely.

And also, I just realized...everywhere I said 0+1 earlier, should be situations where a straight 1 will work, still faster reads...and if all the data goes on a big 4-6 drive setup on the server, there should be little in the way of slowing down, I'd guess. I don't think apps and OS will be writing much to places other than scratch (photoshop) and paging file, I would suspect. I'll figure the exact RAID details once I've purchased everything.

Thanks kindly:)

Shawn
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top