Hi ... Just a question about the RAID cards you are using. Who makes them? Are they supported under Gentoo Linux? I have just brought a ITE RAID card and cannot get the driver to compile - so I have 2 x 120GB HDs sat idle at the moment :(
TIA On Wed, 2003-06-25 at 18:27, Patrick Nehls wrote: > You won't get much/any performance increase striping the RAIDs in Linux. The > amount of data that the RAID5 will need, especially with 2, 8 drive arrays > will absolutely swamp your PCI bus already. If you are doing gigabit > transfers on top of this your PCI bus will be hit even harder. > > With 8MB files you probably want a larger stripe size for performance > reasons but the 3ware cards don't have much of a selection in that area (we > use a 7500-8 at work for a 1.4TB array of 200GB Western Digitals). > > I'm not too familiar with the ins and outs of filesystem performance in > Linux but I'd choose a journaling one just for the extra reliability. > Neither Samba nor NFS add too much overhead to file transfers imho so either > should work for your case. However if you have a Win2k client I'd just run > Samba since the Windows box needs extra software to do NFS. If the IRIX box > doesn't have samba then it may be easiest to run both on the server. > > 3ware recommends sticking the card into a 64bit PCI slot for best > performance. We're using it in a 32bit slot on a standard Intel 845G P4 > motherboard and haven't had any major performance issues though the data is > not heavily used (mostly a huge live backup server). If that Aopen board has > 64 bit PCI slots, definitely use them. If it doesn't, with 2 large RAID > arrays in one machine, you should consider the extra expense of a new > motherboard with 64 bit PCI, processor, and RAM. > > What case are you planning on putting this in? You can find some 3-4U > rackmout cases with 16 hot swappable IDE drive bays but they aren't cheap. > If you have a lower budget maybe you are planning on building one? You will > need some beefy power supplies for 16+ drives. > > Finally, this isn't necessarily important for you, but many of the new Intel > 865PE and 875P based P4 motherboards have onboard gigabit LAN that uses a > new bus to offload all LAN traffic from the overburdened PCI bus. In your > case, this would likely give you a good performance boost. So ideally I'd > grab an 865PE or 875P motherboard with the CSA Lan and 64bit PCI slots (if > it exists). Er though I haven't checked to see if the kernel supports these > LAN cards. > > Please email me privately if you have any questions. > > Good luck! It sounds like a fun project. :) > Patrick > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Karl Huysmans [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2003 10:09 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: [gentoo-user] 3 TB ATA RAID server > > > Hi all, > > I am planning to build a file server running Gentoo, and before I start > buying equipment, I would like to ask if anyone had any experience with a > similar setup. > > Here's the challenge: > > I need to provide around 3 TB of disk space with a limited budget. The files > I need to store are all HD video frames, typically in SGI format, file size > around 8 MB each. The files will be accesed from an SGI IRIX workstations > and from one Win2K box. All these have Gigabit ethernet interfaces. > > Some questions. > > -I really don' t have the budget to do this with SCSI disks, so I planned to > use two 3ware 7500-8 ATA cards and WD 250 GB drives. I would configure the > 3wares for RAID-5, this would give me approximately 3.4 TB with 16 drives. I > would then like to stripe the two RAID's with Linux software RAID0, hoping > this could crank up the perfomance a little bit. Has anyone ever done this ? > What would be the best chunk size for the software stripe, knowing that all > files will be approximately 8 MB in size? > > -Which file system would give the best results for this setup (ext3, > reiser,xfs ...) ? Is there any way to tweak these files systems for optimal > perfomance (8MB files) ? > > -Any tips to boost network performance ? Any tips for Samba and nfs ? Or is > there another network protocol I could try ? > > -I have an AOpen dual PIII board available with two PIII-800 processors. > Would this be enough, or could I have better performances using a newer > board (dual Athlon, Xeon, ...) ? > > -How important is memory (speed, size) for this application? How much should > I use ? > > Any help or ideas greatly appreciated ! -- // --[ UxBoD ]-- // 2.4.20-gentoo-r5 // Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.53GHz // // gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.pgp.net --recv-keys 56ED1CB5 //
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