Hello Craig,
Am 2008-01-10 20:54:01, schrieb Craig Sanders:
> > The smallest WD Raptor drives are 36 GByte which mean, I need at least
> > 7 of them but maybe I will go with a 3w9560-8 which can do Raid-6 (for
> > the Mailstorage). The problem will be only the price for the disks
> > (800 Euro) and for the controller (800 Euro) since mainboards and CPU's
> > plus Memory are going cheap.
>
> for a load of only 40,000 msgs/day, why waste the money on fast but
> expensive scsi drives like these?
I am archiving millions of messages and they must be availlable 24/7
which mean, I can not have any trust in IDE-Drives (even SATA drives
with IDE Hardware)
Also the contents of those E-Mails are stored in a PostgreSQL which
is a separate server...
> get a pair of 160GB SATA drives for the mail store, and run them in
> software raid-1. they'll give you slightly more space (160GB vs 144GB),
> cost a fraction of the price, and they will be significantly faster
> because it's only raid-1 rather than hideously slow raid-5.
And if you have a power fail, your software Raid-1 will screw up.
(We have already tested it here... with very negative results)
Ane if one of your drives fail, how do the Hot-Fix work in SW Raid?
In a Hardware-Raid a NOOB can replace a defective drive sins the
controler care about the rest but in a Software-Raid you need
User-Intervention and of course, you can not have HotSwap except
if you put the drives on A USB-Controller but this costs resources.
But before using a 144 GB SCSI drive, you can use a Raptor 150 GB which
is SCSI-Mechanic too, but has a SATA2 interface and costs under 240 Euro
(the 144GB SCSI-Drive twice the price plus more expensive controller)
> (raid-1 is many times faster than raid-5 without NV write cache. it's
> even a lot faster than raid-5 *with* NV write cache).
>
>
> and get another pair for the OS and everything else.
I do Raid-1 + Hotfix for the OS since years... :-)
even with cheap (36 Euro) 80 GByte SATA1 drives
> > My limit is currently by arround 1500 Euro.
>
> here in .au, you'd be able to get a headless (no screen or kbd)
> dual-core amd64 am2 system with 2GB RAM for about $AUD600.
Since I want to continue the use of 19" Racks, I have only the need
for the MB, CPU, Memory and maybe GraCa.
Here you pay for a CHEAP AM2 Mainboard 60 Euro, an "AMD Athlon 64 X2
4600+ Box EE" arround 75 Euro and for 2 GByte memory arround 90 Euro.
So at least 225 Euro for a "tuning kit".
> 160GB sata drives are about $AUD60 each, x4 = $AUD240.
60 AU$ ? in DE or FR I pay for a 160 GByte drive arround 60 Euro
and for a Raid-Edition (e.g. WD1600YS) 72 Euro.
> all up, around $AUD840. and that would be massive overkill for the job.
But you forgot, that I do automated mailprocessing (->PostgreSQL) and
the scripts need resources too. When I installed the first time my
@home Mailserver I was using three (Raid-1 + Hotfix) 80 GByte SATA1
drives and they gaved up in less then 1 year. Then I was switching
to a used AMI Megaraid Enterprise 1200 (3 Channels, Raid-5) and now
the system was working with 3 SCSI-Drives of 9 GByte (Raid-1 + Hotfix)
and a Raid-5 of 5 SCSI-Drives for the Mailstorage.
Never had problems in the last years, even the SCSI-Drives went used
ones... (They are dated from 1999 and 2000)
> current exchange rate is 1 Euro ~= 1.66 AUD.
>
> so that would be about 506 Euro. only a third of your budget.
This would mean, if I buy at least 10 SATA2 160GB Drives in Australia
I am cheaper there even with transport costs as buying in Strasbourg...
Sounds a little bit crazy...
> you could enjoy the savings or indulge in some frills:
>
> more than enough left over to bring it up to 4GB RAM if you want, and a
> couple of spare 160GB drives (and/or or buy 250GB or 320GB or even 500GB
> drives instead of 160s).
I do not need Diskspace for the Mailserver (146 GByte would be enough...
since I have currently only 52 GByte from 6 years) but security and this
on maximum levey I can pay as private person.
> maybe even go for one of the new quad-core amd64 CPUs. they're only
> about $AUD100 more. spamassassin is not only a memory pig, it's a CPU
> hog too....lots and lots of regular expression comparisons.
Do you have a suggestion for Mainboard working perfectly with a Quad-
Core CPU? Since some times I was running into a memory problem with
3 GByte I like to install 6-8 GByte...
> there's even enough money left over to buy a fully populate Gigabyte
> I-RAM card (battery-backed ramdisk up to 4GB in size, with a SATA
> interface) which you could mount as /var/spool/postfix
>
> actually, i just re-read your msg above and you run courier instead
> of postfix. mount it as whatever directory courier MTA uses for it's
> incoming spool and temporary processing area. that's where a large part
> of the bottleneck is in mail processing.
/var/spool/courier :-)
Thanks, Greetings and nice Day
Michelle Konzack
Systemadministrator
Tamay Dogan Network
Debian GNU/Linux Consultant
--
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