--- Michael Richardson <mcr@sandelman.ottawa.on.ca>
wrote:
> 
> I need to build a new file server.
> (istari.sandelman.ca is 5 years old, has an amazing
> 12Gb on 5 spindles, and a
> whole 100Mhz... yet it works just fine. just no disk
> space)
> 
> Any recommendations on file servers that people have
> put together? 
> my local clone store seems to have lost their clue.
> 
> I'm thinking about an Athlon ~800Mhz, 256Mb ram,
> 3c905 or Intel (on
> motherboard ideally). Then either a 3Ware card, or a
> pair of Promise IDE
> controllers. I don't know much about the 3ware
> cards.
> 
> If I use promise IDE controllers, I get a total of 6
> drives. (CDrom won't
> be connected once I have 6 drives). 

A few questions:

Are you replacing your current box? You say it works
good, why replace it? If you are making a new one then
I understand...

Why use IDE? Depending on the bandwidth you are
allowing out the network pipe, you may see substantial
I/O throughput with scsi. You can use a slower machine
with scsi because it doesn't have the same
requirements for CPU. If you are building a long term
machine, scsi is really the best solution. IDE is for
home computers! If you're buying it because it's
cheaper, re-evaluate your space needs. How much space
do you really need? And if it's important data, do you
really want it on a home computer hard drive? I've had
many IDE drives crash, I've yet to have a single scsi
drive crash.


Use an Intel NIC. I don't normally wave the flag of
Intel, but I noticed probably a 30% improvement in
bandwidth when using the following card in place of a
3c905B:
fxp0 at pci0 dev 12 function 0: Intel i82557 Ethernet,
rev 8

I use a Sparcstation 1 for my NFS server. That's a 20
mhz sparc. I realize I probably get lots more I/O wait
when I'm building from it's source tree on another
mahcine, but I don't care... It does it's job fine.
It's got 4 gigs of scsi disk in it.

Andy

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