That depends on what you are doing with the server. If volatility is not an issue, RAM is cheap. Drop a good 1G in the server, create a RAM drive, copy Sambar to it, and run the server from RAM. File I/O speed becomes a non-issue as it's all in RAM. However, if you want to keep your log files and/or deal with mail, you would not want these things stored only in volatile memory. Even with a battery backup, the risk of loss is too high.
If you are using software RAID, switch to a hardware RAID controller. If you are using a hardware RAID controller, make sure it has adequate RAM. Examine why are you using RAID. Is it for speed and space? Then you should use RAID-0 (striping). Is it for redundancy and primarily disk reads? Then you should use RAID-1 (mirroring). RAID-1 is also the array of choice for performance-critical and fault-tolerant environments - and it is the only fault-tolerant RAID level that requires no more than two disks. Because you are not using SCSI drives, have you taken into account that the drives likely do not have built-in error detection? If you have not, you may want to consider RAID-2. Because you have only two drives, you can not do RAID-3, RAID-4, or RAID-5 (three or more drives required). Then there is the very costly, yet high-performing RAID-10 (at least four drives required). This is a combination of RAID 1+0 - mirrored striped arrays. It can sustain multiple simultaneous drive failures (under certain circumstances), provides the fault tolerance of mirroring, and has the high I/O rates of striping.
Then there is the obvious with any Windows-based OS - do not run services and/or applications you do not absolutely need. Anything extraneous only soaks up RAM and CPU, but introduces a point of failure.
Visit www.pureperformance.com for "Performance Tweaks and Tips for Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP."
Review John Savill's Windows NT/2000 FAQ - http://www.ntfaq.com/.
-Jeff
-----Original Message-----
From: Rodney Richison [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, June 11, 2002 09:16 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [sambar] tweaks {01}
Man, this group is quite these days. So, let's start some discussion. Namely, I've just built a 1800mhz machine with raid and run the server off a differant drive than the Operating system. Both drives ata100 7200 rpm.
Here's the question. How much ram would you put in it? Is 768meg enough? How can I make sambar the faster gun in town? Gimmie some tweaks here relating to sambar and NT.
Highest Regards,
Rodney Richison
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