Well supported, reliable NICs for Redhat Linux/Fedora?

[Jesse Keating]

On Wednesday 19 November 2003 12:39, dsavage at peaknet.net wrote:
> Order of magnitude = integer power of 10

Right, price me out a server that can provide for ~3.5TB of storage in a 
3u space, with hotswap/hotspare capability, hardware raid, and it has 
to be SCSI, add in redundant powersupply unit for the chassis as well.  
Does it come in under $13K?  I bet it doesn't.  My SATA system does.

> The MTBF for SCSI drives is typically 100-1000 (2-3 OoM) times
> greater than EIDE. Incidentally, this has very little to do with the
> I/O interface. SCSI drives are designed to run indefinitely at 100%
> duty cycles. They're engineered to much tighter tolerances and
> fabricated from far more durable materials than your typical mass
> market EIDE drive.

This is not disputed.

> If these new SATA drives are truly intended for 24/7 server use, I
> would expect them to be as expensive as SCSI. 

Yes, there are some disks being built this way, notably the Western 
Digital Raptor SATA drives.  10Krpm built like SCSI, but with a SATA 
controller on it.  And yes, prices are close for the disk, the money 
saved is on the controller.  But the Raptor drives are only at 36gig 
and soon 73gig capacity.  Again you loose in the capacity game.

>On the other hand, if
> they're really just EIDE with a new plug, then you'd have to be crazy
> to build SATA RAID arrays without features like automatic failover
> sparing. When you surround a drive with that kind of technology, much
> of its cost advantage would evaporate.

Not even.  Hardware SATA raid cards that support hotspare failover are 
far cheaper than SCSI alternatives.  A 3ware 8506-12 (12 port SATA 
hardware raid) is somewhere around $700~800.  The 8 port version ( we 
use two in our server to get you 16 drives) is around $500~.  Far 
cheaper than the alternatives, considering that each disk gets it's own 
port.  Throwing money at SCSI just because it's SCSI isn't exactly a 
very good business practice when you can save quite a bit of $$ by 
going with SATA systems, given the proper redundancy built around it.

-- 
Jesse Keating RHCE MCSE (geek.j2solutions.net)
Fedora Legacy Team      (www.fedora.us/wiki/FedoraLegacy)
Mondo DevTeam           (www.mondorescue.org)
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