4 18 gb cheetah drives

[omegaX]

so i went to MIT swapfest this weekend and picked up 4 18gb seagate cheetah scsi drives (they we're in proprietary rackmount hot sawp bays but i took the drives out) anyway i was wondering what would be the best card for a Raid setup i'd like to get another drive and do raid 5. I'll be going back to swapfest in october, so what should i be looking for.

Heres the data sheet on the drive http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/specs/scsi/st118202lc.html

 

[drizzt81]

If you want hardware RAID, you will need an Ultra2, Ultra160 or Ultra320 SCSI RAID controller. If you are fine with software RAID, then an Ultra2, Ultra160 or Ultra320 SCSI controller will be fine.

 

[Vette5885]

Yeah, I'm in the same boat (only I have 5 instead of 4 .... oooh!)

I also picked up a Perc 3 controller and a backplane to connect it all.

For a general use server (sometimes I use 1-2 VM's, sometimes a database, sometimes a CS:S/TF2 server) what would be the best RAID configuration? I'm thinking RAID 10 plus one hot spare, being that the drives aren't that new and they may die on me sooner than later. Plus I'd probably get much better performance with the raid 10 over say, raid 5, as the controller is somewhat old as well.

Thanks

 

[unhappy_mage]

For a general use server (sometimes I use 1-2 VM's, sometimes a database, sometimes a CS:S/TF2 server) what would be the best RAID configuration? I'm thinking RAID 10 plus one hot spare

Sounds like a plan. I have 4 15k disks in raid-10 and they can create duplicates of files at about 100 MB/s, from the array to itself. Pretty impressive, especially when one considers the age and cost of the hardware.

 

[Vette5885]

Sounds like a plan. I have 4 15k disks in raid-10 and they can create duplicates of files at about 100 MB/s, from the array to itself. Pretty impressive, especially when one considers the age and cost of the hardware.

The funny thing is you can get the 18GB 15K drives I have new for about $44 each.

 

[unhappy_mage]

The funny thing is you can get the 18GB 15K drives I have new for about $44 each.

Bah. I got the whole machine (Compaq DL580: quad P3 Xeon, 2 gigs memory, hardware raid controller, remote manageable, rackmount, 4 hotswap disks, hotplug PCI) for $200 shipped. Knowing where to look is half the battle... but that store closed now; they got bought out by another company that didn't want to sell that kind of gear. There are still some decent deals, if what they're selling is exactly what you're looking for. A non-profit or a small business looking to get bigger would do pretty well with one of those boxes... but don't buy one to put in your house. If you're married your spouse will kill you, and if you're not you won't score any points with chicks for them. Nicely packed for shipping, though, and very impressive.

Okay, time to stop waxing enthusiastic about the merits of old heavy-duty stuff and go to bed.