New Web Server - Question

[Player0]

No, not the liquidninjas.com webserver. I'm building a new webserver for the new job. It's as follows:

Iwill DPL533-S
2x 2.4 Xeon 533mhz
2x Corsair 512m ECC DDR
2x Seagate Cheetah U320 36g HDs
Adaptect 2010s U320 0-Channel SCSI RAID controller
IBM 180GXP 120g HD
750m Internal Zip Drive
Gainward GF4 440MX
PCP&C TurboCool 510XE PSU

This should make a great webserver for the new ecommerce sites we will be putting up soon. My question is regarding the SCSI RAID. I have never put together a SCSI RAID system before (only configured them, or used Windows software RAID with SCSI drives). I want the two Cheetahs to be in RAID-1 configuration. The motherboard has two SCSI channels. With an IDE setup, it's best to have each drive on it's own ide channel.

However, I am not sure this is the case with SCSI U320. Does anyone know if it is better (or even possible) to create a SCSI RAID array on two seperate SCSI channels, or do the drives have to be on the same channel/cable?

TIA!

[bigg]

I think that as long as you have the same controller controlling both channels, it should work, but I'd reccomend that you put both of them on one channel because you will not even be pushing 1/2 of the capacity of the card, probably not even 1/4, so that leaves a channel for another RAID array or a Tape or Optical drive down the road, without having to reconfigure. Check your manual to double check this, however.

[Synthohol]

mirroring can be done wherever on any channel same card. (software)
one more hdd and you can raid5 which is best and mostly foolproof. i'll take 5 over 1 anyday!
my .02:)
oh, to answer your Q, in my experience, most raid configs are done (hardware raid) on the same channel, with 68 pins, the data flies anyway!

[Synthohol]

also, that one is a discontinued old card, check out the pdf
scsi (http://graphics.adaptec.com/pdfs/user_guides/asr_sm_sw_ug.pdf)
ok, upon further research, i find the board has the controller, and the card turns it into raid.
is there an advantage to doing this? or perhaps a card with the controller that does raid already?
even with the onboard scsi controller, win2000 will raid things just as nice afaic.
my other .02 is unless you need hotswap capabilitys in a raid 5 config, the 2 onboard channels should mirror nicely with any NT OS.
i forgot to ask what OS will be run.
lemme know!

[Player0]

Hi guys, I found out the answer. A raid array has to be created by having all the drives on the SAME scsi channel. You cannot create SCSI arrays over seperate scsi channels, at least with Adaptec Raid controllers.

RAID5 is a nice solution. I use RAID5 at home, and I have used this on larger webservers. However, SCSI drives are expensive. For a webserver application, drive speed isn't really important. RAID1 configuration will work very well :)

Synth, the 2010S isn't a discontinued card...its a brand new zero channel U320 card :) Yeah, zero-channel raid cards convert the onboard scsi controller on the Iwill DP533-S into a hardware RAID solution. I got it running on Friday, and it works extremely well. Its cheaper than buying a seperate RAID SCSI controller card. But your motherboard has to support it.

Im running Windows 2000 Server. I have installed software RAID with Windows and SCSI drives before. However, this doesn't create a completely redundant solution, as Windows must reside on a non-dynamic RAID portion of the SCSI drives. You can only create a RAID subpartition with Windows soft-raid. Plus, the performance isn't nearly as good as it would be with a hardware raid controller because of all the SCSI overhead.

[Synthohol]

Originally posted by Player0
Synth, the 2010S isn't a discontinued card...its a brand new zero channel U320 card :)
the only reason i said that is because i found it under the discontinued product list at adaptec.com
sorry for assuming, i was misinformed:D :D