My wife has done the unthinkable this season! She decided to buy me a new server for our small office, which I am more than excited about, except for one paramount detail...
Well, I'm jealous!
It is a respectable 1U server with the following specs from manual: Dual (2) IntelR XEON 2.8GHz HT Processors=20 533MHz Front Side Bus, Hyperthread 512K L2 Cache=20 Intel E7501 Server Chipset 2GB PC2100 ECC Reg. DDR Memory Dual (2) 160GB SATA Hard Drives, 8MB Buffer=20 52x Sony CDROM Drive (black)=20 8MB Onboard ATIR RageT XL=20 Intel 10/100Mbps NIC=20 Intel Gigabit NIC
And now the problem: SuperMicro Board comes with onboard RAID, an Adaptec ICH5R SATA controller.
Take a look here: http://www.techno-obscura.com/~delgado/notes/fbsd-ich5SATAraid.html
While it is possible to create a mirrored array with the ICH5 controller, I can't say that I'd recommend it for anything important or in an environment that it would be subjected to heavy loads. The only way I can see using this method would be in conjunction with a consistent backup routine (which should be practiced in all situations anyway).
My suggestion would be to get a 3ware 8006-2LP. It's inexpensive at <$150, it's real hardware RAID, and hot-swapping is supported. 3ware even has a CLI application for controlling and monitoring your arrays. I've personally used this card with FreeBSD 5.3 with great results.
Mike _______________________________________________ [email protected] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
