The department I work for is about ready to ditch Solaris in favor of
Linux (due primarily to the cost and pain of maintaining Sun
hardware). As the long time Linux evangelist, I'm now primarily
responsible for deciding on a configuration for the new machine.
When it comes to Linux, there are two issues that I feel underinformed
on: RAID and SMP support. While I've had lots of experience with Linux
over the years, I've never had an opportunity to try out its RAID or
SMP capabilities. I can remember a time when neither of these
functionalities was quite ready for prime-time, but my impression is
that support is now fairly dependable for both of these.
Aside from the generic advantages of these features, how is using RAID
and/or SMP with Linux going to affect my life? Particularly with
RAID, does anyone have any experience regarding software vs. hardware
based RAID? How about internal vs. external hardware RAIDS? I've
read in places that especially on fast SMP machines that software RAID
is just as fast as hardware.
Finally, does anyone have any vendor reccommendations? Has anyone
bought Linux servers from Dell?
Thank you greatly for any and all help.
--
Public key at www-swiss.ai.mit.edu | Shane Williams
/~bal/pks-toplev.html | Systems Administrator UT-GSLIS
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