For a backupPC server you need to remember that the process is disk bound, not CPU bound. In my tests, software RAID would be ample for what you are wanting to put together, and if you have a controller die it is easy to get another one as the RAID configuration isn't dependant on the controller. Remember too that a lot of RAID controllers are actually software RAID and have a lower performance than the linux / bsd software RAID. Here is a link that states a few things to consider hardware RAID card vs software RAID on standard controllers: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/4349/2/
Also remember that since backupPC is disk intensive, you need to split the reads across as many disks as you can. I would invest in a number of smaller disks and use RAID10 (or RAID1 with LVM combining them). I would definitely not use RAID5 as it has serious performance issues when compared to RAID1. See http://www.baarf.com/ for details. I know this next example is not for backupPC but we recently changed our database server from a 3-disk 15k rpm SCSI (Compaq SmartArray RAID) with dual Xeon 3.2GHz CPU to an 8-disk, 10k rpm SATA (standard non-RAID SATA controllers) with a single PentiumD 2.9GHz CPU and saw an impressive increase in performance. Our database server, like backupPC was limited by disk seeks and having more spindles allowed us to spread the load out. Hope that helps with your decision. Josh. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys-and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ BackupPC-users mailing list BackupPC-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/
