2x36 GB in a RAID 1 with LD 0 of 36GB (the HD's changed to 1x72 & 1x144 and is working fine)
3x72 GB in a RAID 5 with LD 1 of 144GB
1x72 GB as a HotSpare
The 'problem/chalange' is as follows:
The LD 0 RAID 1 is getting too small (2x36GB seen as 36) for my Windows 2008 server C drive. So I changed one 36 GB disk for a 72GB and after a couple of days the other 36 GB to a 144 GB disk (because I had those two and not 2x72 GB or 2x144 GB). Everything is working fine in this RAID 1. But now I want to enlarge/expand de Logical Drive (LD no. 0) from 36 GB to 72 GB.
I only managed to make an extra (third) Logical Drive (LD no. 2 of 36 GB).
Now I do not know how to delete this extra LD 2 on RAID 1 AND how to expand the RAID 1 LD 0 into a LD of 72 GB.
The problem is that I do not know which option to choose in the RAID controller panel (ctrl+m during the bootup progres screen).
Who knows which buttons to press or a Windows based program to configure the RAID?
If there is a failed drive in RAID-1 running on Dell 2850, FreeBSD 5.4, can I just take out the failed drive and replace it with a new one, while the server is running? Will FreeBSD cope & rebuild the drive on the fly?
There is a big difference in price between these two servers. I suspect the 1950 might be overkill.
My 15 websites are presently on a dedicated Celeron win 2003 server. Would the SC1435 make much difference in speed and tasking?
I presently am using an MS SQL DB hosted on a shared server. Is there any problem in putting the SQL DB on the same server as the sites are on? Is this a good or bad idea? Should the DB go on its own separate disk if on same server?
I'm thinking about purchasing a Dell PowerEdge 860 and use it as a web server. I need your guy's inputs on what you guys think of this server regarding the quality, performance, & price.
This server retails for about $420 + s/h.
Here are the specs:
PowerEdge 860 Intel® Celeron® Processor 430 at 1.8GHz, 512K Cache, 800MHz FSB Operating System No Operating System Memory 512MB DDR2, 667MHz, 1X512MB Single Ranked DIMMs Riser Card Riser with 2 Slots: 1 PCI Express x8 slot and 1 PCI Express x4 slot Primary Hard Drive 80GB 7.2K RPM Serial ATA 3Gbps 3.5-in Cabled Hard Drive Primary Hard Drive Controller Onboard SATA Controller - No RAID Network Adapter On-Board Dual Gigabit Network Adapter, No TOE CD/DVD Drive No CD/DVD Bezel Bezel Documentation Electronic Documentation and OpenManage DVD Kit Hard Drive Configuration Onboard SATA, 1 Drive connected to Onboard SATA Controller - No RAID Rack Rail Options No Rails Included Hardware Support Services 3Yr BASIC SUPPORT: 5x10 HW-Only, 5x10 NBD Onsite Installation Support Services No Installation Assessment Power Cords Power Cord, NEMA 5-15P to C13, 15 amp, wall plug, 10 feet / 3 meter
I know this is a newbie question but with the specs above on the server, will this server be working right out of the box (equipped with PSU & other neccessary equips.) and ready for installtion of linux servers?
i notice the Dell do not configure the on board SATA to any RAID unless you purchase add on RAID adapter.
does this mean you can't configure it yourself? do dell poweredge onboard SATA controller support any RAID at all? do dell allow you to configure it yourself or you must purchase the add on RAID adapter?
what is the difference in the PE 1950 III vs the original 1950? We're trying to get a couple in house but 1st must get a better price than $2,475 for the following specs below.
If anyone has a good sales rep at Dell (ours no longer works there), please send it via PM.
ServerWorks GC-LE Chipset supports five PCI buses: three PCI-X (1 x 64bit/133MHz,
2 x 64bit/100MHz), one 64bit/66MHz, one legacy bus (32bit/33MHz)
12 GB DDR PC 2700 ECC Registered
(X5) Maxtor Atlas 15k II 3.5 series Ultra320 SCA II 80 pin in RAID 5
PERC 3/DI RAID controller with 128MB or Cache with back-up battery
(X2) integrated Broadcom Gigabit BaseT with load balancing and failover support
INTEL PRO/1000 MF GIGABIT SERVER ADAPTER C2126 FIBER
J1679 DELL INTEL PRO1000MT DUAL CARD PCI-X
Dual 500 watt power-supplies
I have a few questions.
1) How many websites could a server like this handle on a 100 Mbps synchronous line?
2) Are there any colocation companies that would hook up to the fiber card for connection?
3) What is the best choice of action when dropping line to in in a colocation center? The dual on-board or the Dual Intel Pro/1000MT? I know that there is load balancing on the on-board Broadcom NICs but how do you use them for load balancing mode?? Then are seen as two separate NICs. I can drop as many lines as needed in the data center I am planing going into so number of lines is not an issue. let me know the best action on connectivity for my server with my specs provided.
We have a rack with a bunch of Dell servers in them. The distance between the front vertical mounting brackets and the rear vertical mounting brackets is just over 28 inches (715 mm). We've always used Dell static rails they and they have always fitted perfectly.
We have recently received some new Poweredge 2970s with Rapid / Versa rails, and it seems that the front and rear mounting brackets are only 24 inches (609 mm) apart.
Am I missing something? I can't find any way of adjusting the length of the Rapid / Versa rails.
It looks like we are going to have to pull all the gear out of the rack, move the rear mounting brackets forward, and put everything back in. This is a real nuisance (and I would do pretty much anything to avoid it).
I am putting some servers into a data center in downtown la for a hosting business. I want to put a firewall between the internet and these servers so I recently purchased an older poweredge 1550 to put the ipcop distro of linux on with the intention of making it a highly customizable firewall. The only problem is that it comes with the scsi drives and it's on a raid 5 array so the stock ipcop installer will not recognize the logical drive. Would anyone happen to know if any of the drivers on the dell site will work with the ipcop distro of linux?
Assuming this doesn't end up working out, does anyone have any suggestions for a different firewall solution to use for a hosting company?
Will a Perc 5 raid card work in a non-dell Linux server? These cards can be found for about $100 on eBay, and are much cheaper than the Adaptec cards with similar features and ports.
I have been looking at DELL PowerEdge R200/R210/R410. I am trying to figure out which is best bang for the buck. They all have similar pricing. Which one has best performance?
Is there any way to use SATA harddrives instead of SCSI harddrives with a Dell Poweredge 2650? I purchased the Dell on the cheap. It came with one 36GB SCSI drive. Four more hotswap slots. No sleds/caddies/trays for additional drives, so I need those as well.
Looking at the market (eBay mainly) for used SCSI harddrives, it's pretty pricey to get drives of a decent size (73gb+, $50+ each). I would like to use SATA drives instead (get them brand new vs. used SCSI). Problem is this server does not have an embedded SATA controller, just the SCSI Perc3/DI controller. So maybe get a 3ware 8000 series SATA controller + sata drives + trays? Is that possible? There are no molex connectors inside the server. Power to the harddrives comes from the SCSI backplane.
The server will be just for my personal stuff (personal web site, DNS, etc), nothing mission critical. Just trying to save a few bucks buying cheap large capacity SATA drives vs. used smaller capacity SCSI drives.
Right im about to invest in some new equipment for the business and am looking at one of the 2 above servers. Does anyone have any experience with both or either?
The spec of the machine to start is as follows:
HP Proliant DL380 G5 Intel Quad-Core Xeon 2.5Ghz 4GB Ram 3x 146GB SAS Hotswap RAID5 (OS) 5x 146GB SAS Hotswap RAID5 (Storage)
Dell Poweredge 2950 III Intel Quad-Core Xeon 2.5Ghz 4GB Ram 3x 146GB SAS RAID5 (OS) 5x 146GB SAS RAID5 (Storage)
Both are near identical specs and the price of the HP is slightly more, is it worth it?
For my business i just got 3 new Dell PowerEdge 1750 Rack Servers with windows 2003 installed on them. With 100Mbit speeds should i be able to host numerous game servers and voip servers?
Probably going to give this a shot in the near future anyway, but just wanted to check whether anyone has tried and had success putting either 3Ware 8006-2LP or 9550SX-4LP cards in Dell PowerEdge 860 systems with a couple of SATA drives instead of using the Dell PERC controllers?
I have a couple of Dell 1950s and in one of them, I have 2x Seagate 15K.5s that I purchased through Dell and I also have a spare sitting in my rack in case one goes bad, also from Dell.
I was going to be repurposing one of my other 1950s and was going to get two more 15K.5s for it, but wasn't planning on getting them through Dell (rip off?). This way, could still keep the same spare drive around in case a drive went bad in that system as well.
When I was talking to my Dell rep recently when purchasing another system, their hardware tech said you can't use non-Dell drives with Dell drives in the same RAID array because of the different firmware between them.
Anyone know if it is true? Anyone have any experience with using drives from Dell in conjunction with the same model drives from a third party retailer?
We've got a couple of Dell SC440's that we use for low end stuff. We need one with RAID-1 so after talking with our Dell rep we ordered a 5iR card and the corresponding SATA cables. The cables are kind of funky in that the drive end of the cable has both the SATA and power connector in one "thing". You then plug the SATA power into the back of this (it piggy backs on). Once you have done all that the cover won't fit back on as the power connectors stick about 1/2" in beyond the case.
Anyone out there have a SC440 with RAID so we can compare notes?
Say you have a cage thats 8x12 and you need to add another row, so your cage now becomes 14x12. Now the cage installation is per linear foot. so if they are bumping one of the 12 feet walls out 6 feet. What do you think you should be charged? 6 + 6 + 12? or 6 + 6 + 12 + 12 OR 14 + 14 + 12 + 12?
Also what do you think the legality of a company charging you for a 6 + 6 + 12 + 12 expansion when the other 12 foot section is never touched? Charging for a service that isn't ever done?
Today we are going to conduct a detailed study of RAIDability of contemporary 400GB hard drives on a new level. We will take two "professional" drives from Seagate and Western Digital and four ordinary "desktop" drives for our investigation. The detailed performance analysis and some useful hints on building RAID arrays are in our new detailed article.
Long story short, my father owns a commercial/industrial distribution company where I work as a broker between contractors and manufacturers.
Our current IT Department (who has no formal computer training) has become more useless to me over the past year and are turning my computer into a counterproductive experience which has about driven me off the deep end.
I am therefore deciding to do the unthinkable and break off of the companies server and start working through one of my own here at home.
Ill basically need the machine to act as a place that recieves and stores emails then distributes out to my machines (laptop, desktop)whatever is connected to it, store and access job files/information, and I would like to be able to hook up to my server at work to access a particular program they use on their server, i guess I could probably just install the program on my server too.
I would also like it for personal use and storage as well as possibly hosting my own website (personal website).
I am looking to get a Dell Poweredge 1950 with some solid specs (spend about 4500) to get me going and will be taking classes at the local CC to educate me on running this thing.
I have a few questions about servers in general.
1. Is it possible for me to connect to the current server at my company to exchange or access files/ programs?
2. Can I do this without compromising the security of the server at work? (security is their #1 argument against everything, they told me once that mozilla on my machine compromised the security of the system - BS)
3. Can I run Apples for my workstation and laptop and still interface with the VMware software?
4. I am currently on FIOS here at home, will I need a new dedicated internet line to run the server? what do I need for speed!??
Thanks guys!
I am still totally new to this whole server scene so I apologize if some of my questions are completely insignificant. I am trying to read around as much as possible but I want to get started on this so i thought i would try and get some direction.
Is Motherboard RAID as good as a dedicated PCI-E card? I am guessing a dedicated card is the best option, though costs more.
We are looking at buying a barebones server from Supermicro. It features an onboard RAID controller which supports RAID 0, 1, 5 & 10 - but for some strange reason it will only support RAID 5 if you use Windows. Here is a link to the page detailing the RAID features.
[url]
We are going to be running Linux, CentOS 5.1, so we will only have the choice of RAID 0, 1 or 10. This isn't an issue, as having RAID 10 on 4x SAS (15k) drives will be fine for speed and stability. What is an issue is would this RAID controller be as fast or reliable compared to a dedicated PCI-E card? If it can only use RAID 5 in windows, does that suggest this controller is too reliant on software? It would be a nightmare to suffer downtime and data loss because the controller couldn't hack it during a drive failure, or one day it decided to bugger up the array when rebooting.
So that leads me to looking at this card, this looks very good for what we need. Are adaptec a reliable brand? I've seen it advertised for £200, which is a good price.
[url]
This card features RAID 5 and 6, would RAID 6 be better than RAID 10 for redundancy, or is it too slow to bother with? Also it seems to have a battery module available for it, what does this achieve? Cos surely if the power dies the hard drives and motherboard can't run off this little battery, or does it just help the controller stay alive long enough with some hard drive information in its memory if the power goes out during a rebuild?
Who has linux on a dell poweredge 2650. i have debian on mine right now but havent been able to get the raid and embedded management and MIB's support working with linux
considering switching to redhat so i can use the packaged software from dell.
any one have any advise or experience getting the embedded hardware working with debian? if so how did you do it.
i want to be able to monitor the raid and the drives for defunt drives and such, and also be able to get into the embedded management card, and to be able to use mrtg with the MIB's for fan speed, cpu temp etc etc
Just picked up some used Dell PE 1750's, and was planning to add Drac's in them, but I can't seem to find which drac to use. Anyone that has any experience with this model?
Talked with a salesperson at Dell, first he didn't seem to know what Drac was, and after a while he came back to me with Drac IV which fits into PE1850. He belived it also should fit into 1750, but I don't belive that.
I am in a somewhat complicated situation... I wanted to order a custom server with hardware 3Ware RAID controller but after over a month of waiting I was told the HW RAID controller, as well as any other 3Ware controller they tried, does not work with the motherboard used in the server from Fujitsu-Siemens and that they simply got a reply from FS that the controller is not certified to work with their motherboard.
So although I'd prefer a HW raid, I am forced to either choose a different webhost or setup a software RAID. The problem is, I haven't done that before and am somewhat moderately...scared
I have read a lot of the info about SW RAID on Linux that I could find through Google but there are some questions unanswered still. So I thought that perhaps some of the more knowledgeable WHT members could help me with this problem...
The server specs will be:
Core2Duo E6600 (2.4Ghz), 2GB RAM, 6-8x* 250GB SATA II HDDs, CentOS 4.4 or SuSe, DirectAdmin
* I prefer 8 HDDs (or actually 9) over 6 but I am not sure if their server chassis can hold that many HDDs, I am awaiting answer from them. They don't have any other drives beside the 250GB ones so I am limited to those.
The preferred SW RAID setup is to have everything in RAID 10, except for the /boot partition which has to be on RAID-1 or no RAID I believe, plus one drive as hot spare (that would be the 9th drive). I am quite sure they will not do the setup for me but will give me access to KVM over IP and a Linux image preinstalled on the first HDD so that I'll have a functional system that needs to be upgraded to RAID-10.
How do I do that? The big problem I see is that LILO or GRUB can't boot from a software RAID-5/10 so I will have to mount the /boot partition elsewhere. It's probably terribly simple...if you have done it before which I have not. I have read some articles on how to setup a RAID-5/10 with mdadm (e.g. [url] ) but they usually do not talk about how to setup the boot partition. Should it be setup as a small sized (100-200MB) RAID-1 partition spread over all of the drives in the otherwise RAID-10 array?
What about swap? Should I create a 4-8GB (I plan to upgrade the server RAM to 4GB in near future) RAID-1 swap partition on each of the disks or swap to a file on the main RAID-10 partitions. The second sounds simpler but what about performance? Is swapping to a file on RAID-10 array a bad idea, performance wise?
Is it possible to grow a RAID-10 array in a way similar to growing a RAID-5 array with mdadm (using two extra drives instead of one of course)? mdadm doesn't actually even mention RAID-10 despite it does support it without having to create RAID-0 on top of RAID-1 pairs if the support is in kernel, from what I know.
I got a Dell PowerEdge 850 a couple of years ago, with a 2.8Ghz P4D processor and 2GB RAM. It's currently on CentOS 4 and running quite well with H-Sphere. I host on it a couple of sites coded in PHP, and sometimes a game server or two.
I'm currently thinking of moving on to Windows Server 2008 as I'm intending to put up a web app using ASP.Net. As you can see, my system isn't really a beefy machine, and I was wondering if I would be able to run the new OS on it and continue to be able to achieve a satisfactory performance?
How often do RAID arrays break? Is it worth having RAID if a servers hard drive goes down? I was thinking it may just be a better option to just have a backup drive mounted to my system and in the even of a system failure just pop in a new hard drive, reload the OS, and then reload all my backups?
I am in the process of restructuring the infrastructure on our servers. I am thinking of using either RAID 5 (1 hot spare) vs RAID 10 as my 1U server has 4 HDD tray.
RAID 5 would have better capacity but RAID 10 has better overall performance. Which one do you guys go for a shared hosting server?
