JWColby
jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Wed Nov 1 06:57:04 CST 2006
Mark, The case comes without any power supply, you purchase and install whatever PS you desire. Apparently there are supplies that have a cable between them such that they "hot fail over" in case a PS dies? Or something. I purchased this PS for the system: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817121012 It is a six hundred watt supply and appears to supply plenty of current for everything. I did have to get splitters to get that many (and more) power connectors for SATA. The PS manufacturers haven't quite caught up to reality yet and still provide most of their connections for the old style IDE drive power. Anyway, yes, the motherboard is in that chassis as well. It is just a normal, if rather oversized chassis. It has 4 120 mm fans included and keeps everything well ventilated. A very nice case. As for the "big disk", it is indeed nice. These 320gb Seagates are cheap, at least here in the states. At $95 each delivered to my door, they are the lowest price / mb around, the issue is getting them all put together into a solidly functioning raid array. I purchased this ASUS motherboard for the system: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131011 Which to be honest I am not thrilled with. It works fine but it turns out that the MB manufacturers in general focus on "enthusiasts" which equates to gamers, intent on over clocking. I need other things, like a stable, FAST raid 5 (at least) array. The Raid controller on this MB just doesn't work. I got Raid 5 going and I managed to get it stable, but it was dog slow, down around 5 mbytes / sec write time which is unusable. That is why I went looking for the raid card solution. The Areca is expensive but it is very fast. It has a dedicated Intel processor and about 128 mbytes of ram on the raid card so the card itself handles all of the overhead of generating the Raid striping stuff. It is really too bad it is so expensive, though they are marketing to IT admins with a budget (not me ;-). I would have gone with the 12 or even the 16 disk controller but the extra $450 just wasn't there, and since I didn't have to have it now... The nice thing is that it just worked. I plugged it in, plugged the drives in, booted up, went in the bios and created the drive, waited several hours while it initialized and then it all just worked. And FAST! Writes up around 80 mbytes / sec and reads up around 300 mbytes / sec. This thing is a screamer. John W. Colby Colby Consulting www.ColbyConsulting.com -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Mark Breen Sent: Wednesday, November 01, 2006 3:09 AM To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving Subject: Re: [AccessD] Raid controller Hi John, And do you host your motherboard in the case also, or just the disks? In fact, is that even possible to have the main PC (and controller) in one box and the disks in a remote box? You mention that the two power supplies are not included. So, does that mean that you are only using one? Surely you must be near the capacity of the PSU? Anyway, I am sitting in Ireland in admiration of your big disk ;) wishing I had only like that. Mark On 31/10/06, JWColby <jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com> wrote: > > Mark, > > This is a Lian Li case: > > http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16811112108 > > It has dedicated space for 12 3.5" disks down in the bottom of the > case as well as two power supplies (not included). There is also > space for SEVEN 5.25" drives up in the front of the case, forward of > the motherboard. This case is... shall we say "large". > > I really like the case. > > 8~) > > > John W. Colby > Colby Consulting > www.ColbyConsulting.com > > -----Original Message----- > From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com > [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Mark Breen > Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2006 12:58 PM > To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving > Subject: Re: [AccessD] Raid controller > > Hi John, > > What kind of box are you hosting the disks in, seven disks is quite a > few, especially if you have a CD drive or two also. > > Do you have a seperate tower just for disks? or does your existing > case have enough space? > > Congrats on the controller and disks, sounds great, > > > Mark > > > > > On 31/10/06, William Hindman <wdhindman at dejpolsystems.com> wrote: > > > > ...thanks for the tip JC ...as a matter of fact I was about to look > > into just that for a client :) > > > > William Hindman > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: "JWColby" <jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com> > > To: "'Access Developers discussion and problem solving'" > > <accessd at databaseadvisors.com>; "'Discussion of Hardware and > > Software issues'" <dba-tech at databaseadvisors.com>; > > <dba-sqlserver at databaseadvisors.com> > > Sent: Monday, October 30, 2006 9:00 PM > > Subject: [AccessD] Raid controller > > > > > > >I purchased an Areca 1220 SATA 8 disk raid controller, with (7) > > >Seagate > > >10.1 > > > 320 gb hard disks to create a raid system with. One of the disks > > >was damaged and had to be RMAd. I went ahead and created a Raid 5 > > >array > > using > > > the 6 remaining drives. This gave me about 1.0 terra bytes on one > > volume > > > and about 370 gb on another volume, both Raid 5. I just received > > > the > > RMAd > > > drive back, popped it in, added it to the array and told the > > > controller > > to > > > convert to Raid 6 for both volumes. That was early this > > > afternoon, and the controller has finished the conversion of the > > > large array to Raid 6 and > > is > > > about 50% finished converting the smaller array to Raid 6, all > > > consuming ZERO CPU and doing so while I was using the arrays > > > pretty heavily. The controller is also very fast. Raid 5/6 > > > writes are about the speed of > > the > > > individual drives and reads are much faster (~raid 0 speed > > > according to > > > Areca) > > > > > > These disks are about $95 from Newegg and can be purchased with > > > free shipping if you keep your eyes open so that is a real $95 / disk. > > > This particular controller is currently about $500. This made my > > > actual cost about $1200 for 1400gb in a Raid 6 config. > > > > > > Someday I hope that the Seagate 10.1 750 gb drives drop into this > > > price range in which case I will upgrade. ATM those drives are > > > about > > $375-$400 > > > each which makes them out of my range. > > > > > > I am impressed with this Areca controller which is the point of > > > this email. > > > Areca makes controllers that handle various numbers of disks. The > > > controller uses a PCI-X8 connection to the CPU so you must have a > > > PCI-X capable motherboard. > > > > > > If you need more disks, they also have a 12, 16 and 24 disk > > > controller, for more money of course. > > > > > > Nice controller so far! > > > > > > John W. Colby > > > Colby Consulting > > > www.ColbyConsulting.com > > > > > > -- > > > AccessD mailing list > > > AccessD at databaseadvisors.com > > > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd > > > Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > > > > > > > -- > > AccessD mailing list > > AccessD at databaseadvisors.com > > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd > > Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > > -- > AccessD mailing list > AccessD at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd > Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > -- > AccessD mailing list > AccessD at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd > Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com > -- AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com