I am looking for a PC with a rack mount chassis that can handle 4 IDE or
SATA drives internally with a CDROM and floppy. It should have or
accommodate SATARAID or IDERAID (mainly for mirroring) (not software
raid) and gigabit Ethernet. I intend to run SAMBA and postfix. Anything
cheap would be ideal.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

On Tue, 30 Aug 2005, BN wrote:

> I am looking for a PC with a rack mount chassis that can handle 4 IDE or
> SATA drives internally with a CDROM and floppy. It should have or
> accommodate SATARAID or IDERAID (mainly for mirroring) (not software
> raid) and gigabit Ethernet. I intend to run SAMBA and postfix. Anything

Why not SW RAID? Unless you're talking about RAID 5, SW RAID isn't
that bad...

> cheap would be ideal.

SAMBA?!

Right now, the only Sun box that meets your needs is the V40z, but it's
not cheap. A V20z + external drive array would probably be cheaper.

--
Rich Teer, SCNA, SCSA, OpenSolaris CAB member

President,
Rite Online Inc.

Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URL: http://www.rite-group.com/rich

Rich Teer wrote:
> On Tue, 30 Aug 2005, BN wrote:
>
>
>>I am looking for a PC with a rack mount chassis that can handle 4 IDE or
>>SATA drives internally with a CDROM and floppy. It should have or
>>accommodate SATARAID or IDERAID (mainly for mirroring) (not software
>>raid) and gigabit Ethernet. I intend to run SAMBA and postfix. Anything
>
>
> Why not SW RAID? Unless you're talking about RAID 5, SW RAID isn't
> that bad...
>

Software raid is too unreliable. You have to use a flooopy to boot up if
the SECONDARY (non-boot)drive in a IDE or SCSI chain (mirrored setup)
goes bad.

I rather let the controller handle everything including finding the good
drive in a mirror to boot from .


>
>>cheap would be ideal.
>
>
> SAMBA?!
>
> Right now, the only Sun box that meets your needs is the V40z, but it's
> not cheap. A V20z + external drive array would probably be cheaper.
>


What do you suggest for an external drive array?

In article <11h9cqo7fpjvm6a@news.supernews.com>, BN <BN@BN.COMO> wrote:
>>
>> Why not SW RAID? Unless you're talking about RAID 5, SW RAID isn't
>> that bad...
>
> Software raid is too unreliable. You have to use a flooopy to boot up
> if the SECONDARY (non-boot)drive in a IDE or SCSI chain (mirrored
> setup) goes bad.

Not with Solaris 10 on the V20Z.

Tested, and didn't need a floppy to boot off the opposite mirror half
when either half had "gone bad".

-Dan

On Tue, 30 Aug 2005 14:40:51 -0500 Dan Foster <usenet@evilphb.org> wrote:
> In article <11h9cqo7fpjvm6a@news.supernews.com>, BN <BN@BN.COMO> wrote:
>>>
>>> Why not SW RAID? Unless you're talking about RAID 5, SW RAID isn't
>>> that bad...
>>
>> Software raid is too unreliable. You have to use a flooopy to boot up
>> if the SECONDARY (non-boot)drive in a IDE or SCSI chain (mirrored
>> setup) goes bad.
>
> Not with Solaris 10 on the V20Z.

Not with any Solaris on any hardware.

It's only if the primary drive fails, and then only in certain ways,
that you may need special procedures to boot. But you never need
a floppy.

-frank

Dan Foster <usenet@evilphb.org> wrote:
> In article <11h9cqo7fpjvm6a@news.supernews.com>, BN <BN@BN.COMO> wrote:
>>> Why not SW RAID? Unless you're talking about RAID 5, SW RAID isn't
>>> that bad...
>> Software raid is too unreliable. You have to use a flooopy to boot up
>> if the SECONDARY (non-boot)drive in a IDE or SCSI chain (mirrored
>> setup) goes bad.
> Not with Solaris 10 on the V20Z.

Yes, but doesn't the V20z *have* SCSI HW RAID?

Yours, Bernd
--
When emailing me, excuse my annoing spamfilter - it works for me.

On Tue, 30 Aug 2005, BN wrote:

> Software raid is too unreliable. You have to use a flooopy to boot up if
> the SECONDARY (non-boot)drive in a IDE or SCSI chain (mirrored setup)
> goes bad.

Dunno where you got that idea, because it simply isn't true. Where
I'm on contract right now, we have hundreds of machines using SW
RAID mirroring for their root disks. It hasn't caused us any problems
when a disks let their magic smoke escape.

> > Right now, the only Sun box that meets your needs is the V40z, but it's
> > not cheap. A V20z + external drive array would probably be cheaper.
>
> What do you suggest for an external drive array?

I guess the main question is how much storage space do you need?
Sticking with Sun stuff, the 3120 might be a good choice: it's a
1U array that holds up to 4 hot-swappable (SCSI) disks. A nice
array, but IMHO a bit pricey for what amounts to a box + PSU(s) +
disks. But I like Sun stuff, so I'm considering getting one.

--
Rich Teer, SCNA, SCSA, OpenSolaris CAB member

President,
Rite Online Inc.

Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URL: http://www.rite-group.com/rich

BN wrote:
> I am looking for a PC with a rack mount chassis that can handle 4 IDE or
> SATA drives internally with a CDROM and floppy. It should have or
> accommodate SATARAID or IDERAID (mainly for mirroring) (not software
> raid) and gigabit Ethernet. I intend to run SAMBA and postfix. Anything
> cheap would be ideal.
>
> Any suggestions?
>
> Thanks

Rack mount [server oriented] with IDE or SATA [desktop oriented]?

It sounds like your building a server PRIMARILY so I'd suggest you use
SCSI disks or the Western Digital Raptor SATA drives. As some others
have already suggested, the V40z or V20z are great for this.

I don't suspect you'll find Sun producing *almost server grade*
hardware, which is what you are asking for by not using SCSI drives.


For the record, I am selling my previous workstation, a IBM
Intellistation which has rack mount rails available from IBM. It has
dual 2.0GHz Xeon processors and three (3) U160 SCSI drives on an LSI
MegaRAID Elite 1600. Very reasonable price.

Full details can be found here: http://home.cfl.rr.com/wesw



Wes W.

Rich Teer <rich.teer@rite-group.com> wrote:
> I guess the main question is how much storage space do you need?
> Sticking with Sun stuff, the 3120 might be a good choice: it's a
> 1U array that holds up to 4 hot-swappable (SCSI) disks. A nice
> array, but IMHO a bit pricey for what amounts to a box + PSU(s) +
> disks. But I like Sun stuff, so I'm considering getting one.

Bit pricey?

USD 5000 @ 146G @ 2 disks (raw w/o RAID) for SCSI/SCSI w/ max 4 Disks
-> 2 more disks fit

Apple Xserve RAID:
USD 6000 @ 1TB @ for disks (raw w/o RAID) for FC/SATA w/
-> 10 more disks fit

Methinks, there is place for the price of an FC HBA somewhere in there.

Question is more of whether to buy Apple storage for non-Apple servers,
as the management goodness fades pretty quickly if you don't stay within
the cult completely.

lg, Bernd
--
When emailing me, excuse my annoing spamfilter - it works for me.

BN wrote:
> Rich Teer wrote:
>
>>On Tue, 30 Aug 2005, BN wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>I am looking for a PC with a rack mount chassis that can handle 4 IDE or
>>>SATA drives internally with a CDROM and floppy. It should have or
>>>accommodate SATARAID or IDERAID (mainly for mirroring) (not software
>>>raid) and gigabit Ethernet. I intend to run SAMBA and postfix. Anything
>>
>>
>>Why not SW RAID? Unless you're talking about RAID 5, SW RAID isn't
>>that bad...
>>
>
>
> Software raid is too unreliable. You have to use a flooopy to boot up if
> the SECONDARY (non-boot)drive in a IDE or SCSI chain (mirrored setup)
> goes bad.

With Disksuite, you can prevent this by adding the line:
set md:mirrored_root_flag=1
to /etc/system. Tested on Solaris 9: I can boot with either of the two
disks removed.

--
Best regards,
Jeroen Besse
(to contact me: the nospam address actually exists)