I setup a software RAID last night. Couple comments.
Swapping: Make sure to swap on a RAID partition as well or you won't get one of the major advantages of RAID: the ability to keep running when you loose a drive. The RAID tools for linux are crazy complicated. I am using mdadm which is better, but still not exactly user friendly... I have to say it is far easier to rebuild using a 3ware or Adaptec SCSI card. The boot record seems to only get written to the primary drive using FC2's install. If you want to boot from the second disk in the case of failure you have to mount it from a rescue boot and write the boot record to it. Then reboot. I still haven't been able to successfully test loosing the primary drive and continuing to run. I think that might have to do with my array being messed up and I will try that again tonight. If that works, I guess I'll go with software RAID, and RMA the 3ware card. For future reference if you plan on getting 1u server and use the riser PCI adapter make sure that it works with your hardware. (Ie it 32 bit or 64 bit). Other than that the supermicro hardware is pretty nice for the money. It comes with its own low profile heat sink, mounting rails, plenty of extra screws, etc. I had 0 problems setting it up (other than the 32 bit PCI slot that is). The drive bays on this particular model are very nice. Mount your drives, slide them in, done. It took about 20 minutes to get to POST, and boot. Not much harder than plugging into the wall. Honestly the setup was much easier than my badass $8k Cubix 3.4Ghz blade server that I just got at work. Even though is was supposed to work out the box, I couldn't get it to POST w/out calling tech support. The hardware is on par with other I've used in this category (ie dell, eracks, etc.), at about 1/2 the price. Dual power supplies would be a nice to have, but I think you can get that in their higher end models. I think the software RAID is going to be fine. I just want to test it some more so I can feel more confident about it. _______________________________________________ RLUG mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.rlug.org/mailman/listinfo/rlug
