Re: Cheap RAID system recommendation?

You can get fibre/loaded a5200 for under 15k, you just have to know where to look (hint, buy used). Configure in split-loop (use dual fibre cards) and have fun.

On Mon, 19 Aug 2002 05:51:09 +0000 (UTC), Akop Pogosian <akopps+usenet_at_ocf.berkeley.edu> wrote:

>In comp.unix.solaris Rick Denoire <100.17706_at_germanynet.de> wrote:
>> Hello *.admin
>
>> We are using a Sun's StorEdge A1000 in a Sun E3500 which happens to be
>> extremely stow. Before we realized that it was so slow, we planned to
>> buy a second one, but now we are looking for a different Raid system.
>> The problem is that due to administrative reasons, we are not allowed
>> to spend more money than it was once planned. So we are looking for an
>> alternative that won't be more expensive that about 30 000 US$.
>
>> This is what we need:
>
>> - sustained transfer rate > 70 MB/s (not on paper, but *measurable*)
>> - fastest SCSI flavor available (fiber channel would be way to
>> expensive)
>> - disks with 15000 RPM for small latency
>> - 400 GB capacity total, equivalent to 200 GB in a Raid 10 conf.
>> - no special features except a battery buffered cache
>> - greater number of spindles are preferred over bigger disks
>
>> This is a quite modest system I think. Be aware that a very fast
>> system could even be inappropriate for this old fashioned machine (4
>> SPARC 2 CPUs at 400 MHz), but of course, latency can never be small
>> enough for scattered I/O operations.
>
>
>By the way, you might have to do with fiber channel solutions if you
>need to connect to an Ultra2 a disk system that needs to sustain
>transfer rates faster than 40MB/second. I have never heard of an SBUS
>SCSI card that supports modes faster than UltraSCSI (either
>single-ended or differential). In fact, lots of A1000/D1000 users,
>often use the slow Fast/Wide differential SCSI SBUS cards to connect
>to the disk arrays (this could be your problem too, double check what
>kind of card you have). If you need something faster, consider Sun T3
>disk array for workgroup. It more or less meets your specs (except
>that it uses 10K RPM disks but it has a much faster RAID controller
>with up to 1GB of cache). This list price is well above $30,000 but
>you could try to negotiate a better deal with Sun's sales people.
>
>--
>Akop Pogosian
>
>This space has been accidentally left blank.

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We use Oracle 8.1.7.3 on Solaris 2.7 boxes remove NSPAM to email Received on Tue Aug 20 2002 - 13:08:48 CDT