On Jul 24, 2012 5:08 AM, "Stan Hoeppner" <s...@hardwarefreak.com> wrote: > > On 7/23/2012 11:05 AM, Shaffin Bhanji wrote: > > I am thinking of the Norco 16/20 hotswap and a 2x operton QC CPU m/b > > but wasnt sure what a solid performing m/b would be that will work > > well with the LSI? Any thoughts? > > You didn't even mention the drives. The drives are the most important > ingredient of an IO server. If you want low latency high throughput > random IO, you want 10k or 15k drives (or SSD), and you can use fewer of > them WRT 7.2k SATA drives. No matter what you do, do NOT use parity > RAID, i.e. RAID5/6, for your workload. You will horribly regret it and > curse your new machine. It won't be the hardware's fault, but yours, > for choosing the wrong RAID level, and then not configuring your storage > stack properly to work with it. Even it if configure everything > properly for RAID5/6, the performance will still be an order of > magnitude lower than RAID10, for a random IOPS workload. > > If this machine will strictly be an IO server, not running any VMs or > other applications locally, then you're wasting your money with a dual > socket 8 core system. IO servers don't need lots of CPU cycles and > typically don't need lots of RAM. What they do need is fast disks and a > good RAID controller. If dual core AMD server processors were still > available I'd still be using them in storage servers. The extra two > cores go wasted 99% of the time in such a machine. Even the 2nd core in > a dual core chip goes wasted most of the time. The only time it comes > in handy is processing NIC/HBA interrupts under very heavy IO load. > Installing irqbalance is a necessity with such an IO server. > > > Thanks my hands are now itching for this project to be completed :-) > > As I said, the SuperMicro box with 8x 10K drives in RAID10 and the LSI > will run circles around a 16/20 bay box with 7.2k drives in RAID6, with > a random IO workload. This assumes a production environment with a real > workload. If this is a home/hobby server, you may not notice the > difference as you'll never sufficiently tax the IO subsystem. > > -- > Stan > > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org > Archive: http://lists.debian.org/500e0366.4080...@hardwarefreak.com >
Hi guys, Very interesting read! I apologize for being OT, but where could one learn about storage systems (even such as the ones you mentioned earlier)? Any online resources or even books you could recommend? Thanks
