Jim Baxter wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> The boss just told me to find a faster solution to the setup at one of our
> branches and I need your help.
> We have an Intel 550 with 4 4 gig drives supporting about 80 users. Each
> user will have about 100 files open and will be making multiple disk access
> every second. We now need to double the load. Just a faster cpu or even
> multiple cpus would not seem to help a lot if the disks are the bottleneck.
> Does anyone have this kind of operation or know where I might contact a
> vendor that could provide a "reasonable" solution?
>
> Thanks
>
> Jim Baxter
> Morrison Supply Company
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Well, you really haven't given much enough infor for any detailed answer.
How are these files used and do you need (want) addtional security? A
quick answer would be to purchase a low end Mylex 250 or similar caching
RAID controller (< $500) and set the four drives up as RAID0 (striping
across all four drives with no parity/redundancy). You don't lose any
space and your I/0 should at least double. If these files are say 90%
read and 10% write and you want some redundancy, you could add one more
drive (to keep the space the same) and set the drives up as RAID5. If
you're on a UPS, you could also (in either case) set up write back rather
than write through; depends on the importance of the data etc...
Note that the Mylex (and one or two others) uses a block device driver
rather than SCSI, which makes it more effecient.
Also, any sort of hardware RAID will necessatate backing up the machine
and formatting the drives.
Best
Cokey
--
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Cokey de Percin, DBA Email:
Policy Management Systems Corp. Work - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Columbia, South Carolina Home - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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