CPU & RAM in a storage box

[geoffrey mendelson]

On Sep 9, 2010, at 6:35 PM, Hetz Ben Hamo wrote:

>
> I'm planning to add some big storage solution to my VPS business. I  
> did some checking and calculated the costs, and figured out that if  
> I want to have a decent 12TB solution NAS box, it would be best if I  
> would roll my own. (12 TB before all the RAID stuff, after that it  
> would lot less). All other solutions are very expensive (example:  
> IBM EXP 3000 costs here 6K nis without a single hard disk).
>

The question you should be asking yourself, IMHO, is what can I buy  
that will be as reliable as a commerical, "industrial grade" server?





> I'm planning to use hardware based RAID card, minimal Linux  
> distribution and have some offers like iSCSI, NFS, CIFS - the usual  
> suspects.
>
> My question is: since I'll use hardware RAID card, which processor  
> and how much RAM should I put in such a machine? Xeon is overkill  
> IIRC.

For example, a system which costs under 900 NIS would do the job. You  
can get them from Ivory or KSP. They have a dual core ATOM processor,
one PCI slot and one DDR2 memory slot. The power supply is not very  
big, but it will power a bunch of 5400 rpm "green" disks.

How well will it work? How long will it last? Will it be fast enough?

And the "killer" question, how much will it cost to replace, in the  
value of downtime, your time to replace it, bad will among your  
customers, etc?

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson,  N3OWJ/4X1GM
To help restaurants, as part of the "stimulus package", everyone must  
order dessert. As part of the socialized health plan, you are  
forbidden to eat it. :-)