I agree with Josh on every point, including my own! ;)
What is your application for this RAID anyway? Remember, actual disk space is not a matter of taking the full disk space and dividing by two (sorry, not to nitpick, Josh!!!), you also have to factor in the space "lost" to build the RAID. For example, my 3.5TB, with 2x7Drive RAIDs, came up to be just about 1.4TB per controller. Just something else to keep fresh in your mind when planning and considering what you may need to do, rather than like to do. :-)
If you've never used the Xserve RAID before, you'll be very happy, I think. The performance of my RAID, running with a Dual 2.0GHz Xserve G5, is just marvelous! Unless its some high end video work, I doubt you'll miss any extra performance that you may gain with striping across all 14 drives.
Michael Dhaliwal
Apple Certified: ACHDS, ACTC
Apple Product Professional
Loyola Press
3441 N. Ashland Ave.
Chicago, IL 60657
"If IT was easy
Everyone would do IT"
-----Original Message-----
From: Josh Wisenbaker [mailto:email@hidden]
Sent: Fri 10/29/2004 8:48 PM
To: Michael Dhaliwal
Cc: Piers Uso Walter; Ken Carlile; Mac OSX Server
Subject: Re: Xserve RAID: RAID 5 set using more than seven drives?
On Oct 29, 2004, at 7:59 PM, Michael Dhaliwal wrote:
> I would say leave the RAID at 2x7 drive RAID 5. I had to make the
> same decision about a week ago and that's how I left my storage. No
> one I spoke with really suggested 50 as a good idea. Yes, you will
> probably get a performance gain due to the fact that you have a set of
> 14 drives, instead of 7. Its really your choice. Its a matter of
> better performance with the set of 14 drives compared to the safety of
> being able to keep your data online if a controller goes offline and
> keeping one extra layer of complexity off your data set by not
> software striping across controllers.
>
> Do you need more space than one 7 drive bank can give you? I simply
> broke off some data into the second controller, so instead of having
> one bank 90% full, I have one 50% and the other 40%.
This is what we do too. I think you get more flexibility this way. If
you are editing HD video on it then go for the 50, but for data storage
just leave them separate.
7 drives in a Xserve RAID is now 2.8TB!
Josh
-
Josh Wisenbaker, ACSA
Sr. Systems Engineer
ComputerTree Technologies
1-800-467-9820
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