> On Fri, Aug 18, 2000 at 06:16:09PM +0100, Jonathan Laventhol wrote:
> > Hello Folks --
> >
> > Anybody built a file server with approx 1000 Gbyte or more?
> > Or even 200 Gbyte?
>
> Joe Greco did this for a news machine last year. He used several wide
> SCSI controllers, and a bunch of 36G drives, if I recall correctly.
Three shelves of 36GB'ers for ~~.75TB.
And again early with the 50GB Barracudas that Seagate promptly discontinued
on me. >:-( But that got me 1.8TB.
Now I'm waiting several months for an order of "many" (where many is a large
number) of 73GB Cheetahs. The ones with the 16MB cache. :-)
I'm looking to stick 8 shelves of 9 73GB drives (72 * 73 = 5.26TB) on a
machine and have some fun. With additional machines for backup. The
Adaptec 39160 is fantastic for cabling; you get two VHDCI connectors on
the back and call it a day. Unfortunately it's not supported under 3.5R,
which introduces some complications for me.
> > I'm looking for a cheap simple way of doing this. Lots of
> > IDE drives? (How many can you have?) Or SCSI? (Again,
> > how many can you have?).
>
> Good, Fast, or Cheap. Pick any two :-)
>
> I'd suggest two Symbios based LVD SCSI Cards. Up to 14 drives per
> chain, with very reasonable cabling limitations.
Reasonable suggestion. While it may not be as "cheap" as IDE, the design
is trivial and isn't going to involve difficult cabling issues like the
new IDE stuff tends to cause. The drives will also likely last longer and
perform better.
You can get Seagate Cheetah 73GB's for ~$1100 (wholesale, and you should
be buying wholesale if you're buying any number of drives). Get 18 of them
for 1.3TB of space, which'll probably translate to just a bit more than 1TB
of usable space. Stick them in two Kingston DS400's ($440 ea) with cabling
($120 ea internal, terminators and ext another $100 maybe).
That's a bit over $21,000 for a very competent 1TB storage array.
Hook it up to an Adaptec 39160 ($350) in the server of your choice, and
away you go, leaving only one PCI slot burned, and if you really needed
to, you can still add additional devices on the end of the SCSI busses
that drive those two shelves (like an additional shelf, split 5/4).
I personally recommend the use of removable drive modules, at an additional
tax of about $75/drive.
> Can IDE drives release the bus during seeks? Historically thats been
> the big advantage of SCSI: Two IDE drives are no faster than one IDE
> drive, while SCSI scales in performance.
I believe that's all been dealt with. ICBW.
Alternatively, you can try things like the 60GB Maxtor drive (under $250)
and the DeskStar 75GB (in short supply and $550), but you've gotta remember
that to get a terabyte of space, it's going to take maybe 18 of those Maxtor
drives, and cabling is going to be a joy. On the flip side, the cost is
low, at only $4500 for the drives.
I'm not sure I'd want to try it. Especially with the failure rate on the
low end drives.
... JG
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