9fans archive / 2000 / 07 / 152 /    prev next

From: jmk@pla...
Subject: Re: [9fans] Problem with 2ed File Server
Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2000 12:29:49 -0400

	>BTW, what would you consider as a reasonnable PC to be used as a file
	>server for a few people?
	>        Which SCSI card (is the better)?
	>        Which 100 Mbps card?
	>        What's a reasonnable memory size?
	>	What main board for a file server?

These are all good questions and I can't answer any of them.

As has been hinted at before, I hope to do some re-engineering on the
fileserver kernel and this will hopefully also yield some insight into
configuration.

Our main fileserver has been through two (non-media) upgrades in 10 years.
The original hardware was a 2-processor SGI Power Series (25MHz MIPS R3000)
with 128MB and a handful of, what were for the time, big SCSI drives for the
cache in front of a 350GB SONY WORM jukebox.

The current hardware is, except for the 1.2TB HP MO jukebox, about 5 years
old:
	200MHz Pentium on a Gigabyte GA-586DX motherboard
	128MB memory
	Buslogic BT-956D SCSI controller for the cache/tmp discs)
	Buslogic BT-946 SCSI controller for the MO jukebox
	6x 9GB SCSI discs for cache
	6x 9GB SCSI discs for scratch (not backed up to MO)
	1x 9GB SCSI disc unused
	Digital DE500 Fast Ethernet controller

This is clearly old and crufty. I would hope to push this in the direction
of
	much faster, multiple processors
	much more memory
	more SCSI controllers (Symbios)
	faster, bigger SCSI discs
	ATA discs
	Gigabit ethernet to a switch

With these components we could tune the configuration for the best balance
of CPU/memory/disc/network. I'd be happy to discuss options.

--jim

P.S. If I had to buy today I'd buy a Symbios-based SCSI controller and
any of the 3 Fast Ethernet controllers currently supported in the distribution,
Digital 2114x, Intel 82557 and 3Com.