Hello Mail Admins,
This is one subject that has been discussed on this list and which has
solicited the most diverse array of responses.
Interestingly, it's one subject that I never get to understand, since
every time I look at the discussions on the archives, it turns out that
I am relying on information that is, to me, more theoretical than is
practical. That is because all I know about these storage systems is
theoretical. I have never handled any in real life and the subject
really makes me sick every time I go to it ;-)
Now I am back to it again, hopefully for the last time, since I have
like decided the path to take. That is basically why I am writing to
request for advise. I hope you, the admin who has practical experience
in this area, will oblige to part with some of that valuable knowledge.
My doubts (imaginary though) have something to do with performance. I'd
call that resilience in storage parlance, or is it? I am basically
after comments as regards resilience and throughput.
I am going to use Xserve RAID (Hello OS X gurus!) together with xSAN.
I will have a G5 box for all this so that there's harmony. At least
10 servers are going to access the 5.6TB storage via xSAN. These are
my mail servers (Exim), Database and SQL servers.
Never mind the cost, because it's actually what has driven me to this combo.
It's a fraction of what NetApp, IBM, etc offer, as much as I can see.
I recognize that the factors to consider might have more to do with
the disk I/O (for now) and perhaps the volume of mail that I transact
per second, per hour or something ... I am not quite knowledgeable with
these systems, so bear with me.
XServe RAID uses Ultra ATA disks. These are not SCSI disks, nor SATA
disks. It's a RAID system anyway and I think my choice of RAID
architecture will be most important.
I am not courting disaster, yes?
Is anyone out there familiar with what I should expect?
I am just lost in the "sea of storage lunacy" at the moment and as you
can see, I am more of a lunatic at the moment.
If there are questions that I need to answer for you to give me helpful
tips, please fire them at me.
Information about xSAN is here:
http://www.apple.com/xsan/
Thanking you in advance.
cheers
- wash
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Odhiambo Washington . WANANCHI ONLINE LTD (Nairobi, KE) |
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