Speaking as a database administrator, it's also good for running a large data warehouse application. With databases you want to maximize the number of spindles to increase throughput with minimal seeks (although with that many drives you're probably going to hit the limitations of the PCI bus). Many database servers will run an array with many smaller disks, rather than fewer large disks. It's much faster to pull 1 MB off 20 disks simultanously than to pull 20 MB off one disk. Also, someone commented on the negligible performance difference between SW & HW raid. While this may be the case for RAID 1, 0, or 10, with any RAID solution that requires parity computation (3, 5, 30 or 50), you had better go the hardware route. Steve > -----Original Message----- > From: fedora-list-admin@xxxxxxxxxx > [mailto:fedora-list-admin@xxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of mike webster > Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2003 9:41 PM > To: fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx > Subject: Re: raid controller recommendation > > > I'm in the shared / dedicated / collocation / free hosting business. A > 16 drive array is quite handy for creating a SAN. Right now I have > (many) servers running 72GB SCSI drives in a RAID5, 3+1 configuration > and I must say its quite expensive. Imagine the cost savings by > populating a 16 drive SAN with 300GB IDE drives. Terabytes of storage, > much cheaper that SCSI... > > Okay, that was my $.02 worth. Please continue... > > Mike. > > > On Thu, 2003-12-11 at 20:29, Robert L Cochran wrote: > > Jesse, what advantage does having a 16 drive RAID array give > you? I'm in > > no way a RAID expert and don't understand the business need for a 16 > > drive array. > > > > Thanks!
