> In recent posts, and other times in past posts, people have dismissed > Apple's Xserve as not ready for prime time as far as servers go. > They seem quite good to me.
> But, I have heard that Apple boxes (pre-Xserve) have been used for years > as servers in Universities, and places like Ford, and some others > Those are bad examples of servers. Generally speaking, the Apple boxes were only used for one of two reasons. First, the people didn't have skills with other operating systems. Or second, the software only worked on a Mac. > This confuses me -- does Apple know something that others don't, or vice > versa? > I think it really comes down to people's opinions on hard drives. > One comment was that SCSI interface to hard drives is better than ATA > IDE interface. > That kind of blanket statement used to be true, but now it really depends. It is possible to have a faster more robust SCSI drive than an ATA, but the opposite is true as well. It all really depends. It should be noted however that the SCSI specification is more strict than the ATA specification, so generally speaking SCSI hard drives are high quality. > Others said that they would not consider hardware for a server unless it > had RAID. > It depends on what the server is doing. Some people setup the web servers with RAID 5, which is about the worst thing you can possibly do performance wise with your disk subsystem for a web server. > Is RAID necessary for an Application Sever, like JRun? > No > Is RAID necessary for an Web application Sever, like CFMX? > No > Is RAID necessary for an Web Sever, like Apache? > No > Is RAID necessary for a Database Server, like MS-SQL? > Yes > Do all of the above have the ability of deploying on or taking advantage > of a RAID? > Generally speaking, all of the above are disk subsystem agnostic. > Do RAIDs normally go in the same box as the server(s) or they just a > separate rack-mount component? > It depends on the size of the server and the number of disks you use. > If separate, how do RAIDs interconnect with the other rack-mount boxes? > SCSI, Fiberchannel, or IP > Finally, what would be the configuration of a good, reliable Web Hosting > environment that included all the above servers and RAID, look like? > It all really depends on what you are looking for. Two cheap servers with no redundancy built-in may be more reliable than one server with redundancy built-in. -Matt ______________________________________________________________________ This list and all House of Fusion resources hosted by CFHosting.com. The place for dependable ColdFusion Hosting. FAQ: http://www.thenetprofits.co.uk/coldfusion/faq Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/cf-talk@houseoffusion.com/ Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists
