Michael West said: > The SAS server will be on WIN2K. I am thinking of using Debian with > software RAID and SAMBA. I have had good experience with this. Maybe > even use the 8mg cache western digital IDE drives. We only expect a > dozen users simultaneous or so, but working with large datasets.
be sure to test the raid configuration. I have 3 6x80GB IDE raid systems on 3ware 6800 series controllers. Whenever a disk fails the system crashes. The systems are in RAID 10. Since I switched from IBM to maxtor drives the drive failures have gone down ~90% but there's still been 2 or 3 failures since october 2001. it shouldn't crash, but it does. on my SCSI raid systems the system doesn't go down(or even flinch). 36GB SCA IBM SCSI drives are goin for about $170 on buy.com(in clearance) last I checked. That(to me) is an amazing deal. If I had a job I'd buy a bunch. SCA is the best for hot swapping but of course you need SCA backplanes to do it with properly. Er looks like buy.com sold out of those drives already:( not sure about SAS. Samba works well for most enviornments though. Test it out ahead of time to be sure of course :) Only issue I can think of is locking. I have no idea what SAS is or what kinda stuff it does so, can't give much advice beyond the hardware front. nate -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]