[SLE] SuSE 9.3 x64 and SATA II raid

From: Mike Coan (mikecoan_at_woodlawnfoundation.org)
Date: 07/11/05

  • Next message: Bruce Marshall: "Re: [SLE] Printer Stopped on 9.3" 
    Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2005 16:40:42 -0400
To: suse-linux-e@suse.com

    We have a small office LAN (10 workstations) We are in the process of
    replacing our server. For one of our major applications we have to have
    a Windows Server. My plan is to run SuSE 9.3 x64 on the server, and
    then run Windows 2003 server as a guest OS using VMWare workstation 5.0.

    Windows 2003 is a supported guest of VMWare Wks 5.0. SuSE9.3 x64 is not
    officially supported, but SLES 9 is and I have read of a number of
    people successful running VMWare 5.0 on SUSE 9.3 x64.

    We will probably get an nforce4 motherboard. A number of these support
    SATA II (Sata300) drives. Although the transfer rate for SATA II is
    double that of SATA I, we don't transfer big files. I suspect that seek
    times are more important. Most reports indicate that the Western Digital
    Raptor is the fastest SATA drive, even though it is only SATA I. It has
    much faster seek times than the SATA II drives available. 80 GB Hitachi
    SATA II drives are available for $60 at Newegg, while the 74 GB Raptor
    goes for about $165

    Regarding RAID, from what I have read. I would not use the nvidia raid
    included with the nforce4 boards, but use YAST to set up software raid.
      My plan is to use RAID 0 (I know that means no redundancy) and then
    use an additional hard drive for backing up the data files.

    I have read some old posts on the internet indicating that you can't
    boot from a RAID drive. i don't know if that is true or not. Or maybe
    it is wise not to boot from the raid 0 device. Also, should the swap
    file be put on the raid 0 device.

    One thought was to have three drives. The first drive would have /boot,
    swap, and /databackup. The other two drives would be raid 0 and be
    mounted as /.

    Does this sound reasonable. I would be interested in any experiences of
    software raid under SuSE 9.3 x64, especially if it involves the nforce4
    chipset.

    i am currently looking at the following motherboards.

    ECS KNI Extreme
    DFI Lanparty UT nf4
    MSI Neo4 Platinum

    Another option is the 3ware raid controller. It seems like overkill for
    our small shop.

    i am not inclined to use raid 5. Our current server had raid 5 with a
    Perc controller and 3 Ultra 160 SCSI drives. When one of the drives
    failed the controller began beeping like crazy, but everything worked
    Too bad i didn't know what the beeping meant. By the time I figured out
    what the beeping meant, a second drive failed and I had to reinstall
    Windows Small Business Server on the remaining drive.

    Any thoughts are welcome.

    Mike 

    -- 
Michael A. Coan
Woodlawn Foundation
524 North Avenue, Suite 203
New Rochelle, NY 10801-3410
Tel 914-632-3778
Fax 914-632-5502
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  • Next message: Bruce Marshall: "Re: [SLE] Printer Stopped on 9.3"

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