Quote:
Originally posted by RK
Can you be more specific?
Personally, I would appreciate your input.
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There's lots about servers that would be worth talking about... The only way to determine an optimal server setup is to first identify what it will be doing (scripts, html, etc) and next how much utilization (bandwidth).
Here's a few miscellaneous facts..
15k RPM SCSI drives are cool but they're way fucking hot. There's no way I'd put those in a server because I think one would be unlikely to appreciate the difference since things are generally slowed by the system bus or other components. Either way, you had better install additional cooling.
IBM drives suck? Oh come on, give me a fucking break. They are excellent drives. All manufacturers have a small failure rate - most likely you ended up with shit-ass bad luck. When purchasing drives, IDE or not, look at the specs and the MTBF (mean time before failure). That will give you some idea of drive quality. Low quality drives may be 100,000 hours while higher quality manufacture will generally result in 3-5x that.
Raid 5 with 4 drives? That's interesting. Typically people do them with 3 drives or 5 drives (I'm not familiar with higher numbers as my largest raid 5 had 5 drives). Perhaps someone that is more of an expert can tell me if there is something odd about that.
It sucks that two drives died but I'm wondering if it was due to human error. That would otherwise be a real statistical anomolie. One thing to consider here is that even with a RAID system having a backup to tape is a good idea. Remember that despite the fact a RAID configuration will protect you from drive failure it will NOT protect you from human error, viruses or a hack.
FreeBSD is probably superior but hundreds of thousands of servers operate successfully on Red Hat so to say it's crap is nonsense.
More advice? Leave building your server up to an expert. Why? Well, it's broken now isn't it? lol
Zak - Sounds like you had bad luck... or a bad install... and that sucks. However, Dell does not. It's nonsense to say they are shitty computers when everyone from NASA to LikeWhoa uses them. There's statistical error in the manufacturing of everything. Beyond that, if you're having configuration problems then welcome to the world of setting up servers - doesn't matter who the manufacturer is or what the OS is. Shit happens.
I'm a total fucking geek. I was probably the only 14 year old with every issue of Computer Shopper in 1989. The reality is that there is good and bad in everything. In the world of computers failure is statistical and installation problems are commonplace. Is there hardware I don't like? Sure, tons of it.... but that's another thread.
Cheerio!
Brad