In the past I would agree fully, and in some cases still do. However, IDE has come a LONG w, and the 3Ware controllers are very good. That I think is one of the keys to making solid ATA raid sets. A good controller that dedicates one channel (ide controller) per drive along with a coprocessor for Raid 5 will keep the performance up as well as reliable.
The biggest down side is spindle speed. In most cases you will be forced to use 7200 rpm drives or slower. If you are going with PATA, I'd stick with 7200 RPM Maxtor's, and if I had to build a server using ATA for other than file serving tasks I'd use the 10K Western Digital Raptors. On our latest upgrades for our field offices, each of their file server, domain controller boxes were replaced with Dell PowerEdge 400SC's with a pair of 7200 rpm SATA drives mirrored by and Adaptec controller so the drives could be hotswapped by opening the box and pulling the SATA power cable and then the data cable. These servers have been rock solid and plenty fast for our offices with lees than 70 users. For Exchange, ATA would not be my first choice, but if forced to use it due to cost reasons I would pick they 10K raptors to keep my performance as high as possible. I would also use a chassis/controller combo that would allow at least one hot spare drive per raid 5 or 0+1 set in the system, and I would keep another one on the shelf. Miles ------------------------------ Miles Holt, MCP Network Engineer Summit Marketing [EMAIL PROTECTED] 770-303-0426 ------------------------------ "Show me a completely smooth operation and I'll show you someone who's covering mistakes. Real boats rock." - Frank Herbert, "Chapterhouse: Dune" -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Craig A. Mills Sent: Monday, February 09, 2004 7:53 PM To: Exchange Discussions Subject: RE: Exchange Hardware Question Never Ide, SCSI only on the server. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Sean Faust Sent: Sunday, February 08, 2004 8:09 PM To: Exchange Discussions Subject: Exchange Hardware Question I have been tasked with migrating our current Exchange 5.5 environment, 7 servers most fairly maxed out on storage running Standard edition. The requirement from my boss is to use Q-Sol servers with 3Ware IDE Raid cards. Would any of you trust Exchange on IDE Raid for a 1500 user environment????? The users will be spread out over 4 servers with memory and processors not being an issue but I am heavily sketchy on using IDE Raid with Exchange. Thanks in advance for any help offered! Sean Faust 540 Boulevard, SE Atlanta, GA 30312 Home 404-624-1089 Cell 706-773-1437 [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Web Interface: http://intm-dl.sparklist.com/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=exchange&text_mode=&; lang=english To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe via postal mail, please contact us at: Jupitermedia Corp. Attn: Discussion List Management 475 Park Avenue South New York, NY 10016 Please include the email address which you have been contacted with. _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Web Interface: http://intm-dl.sparklist.com/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=exchange&text_mode=&lang=english To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe via postal mail, please contact us at: Jupitermedia Corp. Attn: Discussion List Management 475 Park Avenue South New York, NY 10016 Please include the email address which you have been contacted with. _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Web Interface: http://intm-dl.sparklist.com/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=exchange&text_mode=&lang=english To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe via postal mail, please contact us at: Jupitermedia Corp. Attn: Discussion List Management 475 Park Avenue South New York, NY 10016 Please include the email address which you have been contacted with.
