[Asterisk-Users] Hardware for Asterisk

[Matt White]

Robert L Mathews wrote:
> At 1/16/04 7:25 AM, Andrew Kohlsmith <akohlsmith-asterisk at benshaw.com> 
> wrote:
> 
> 
>>That's pure bullshit -- I use software RAID *specifically* because I value 
>>my data.  I don't want to buy two hardaware RAID controllers to have one 
>>sit on the shelf just in case the first dies... and if the second dies 
>>you're SOL because they've lasted long enough that they're no longer 
>>available.  Linux software RAID is available on any Linux system and if the 
>>system blows up I can put the drives in another system and *not* worry 
>>about it not being detected.
> 
> 
> Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
> 
> We originally thought hardware RAID was the way to go, and we bought a 
> couple of fully loaded Dell PowerEdge 2550s with SCSI hardware RAID 5 
> arrays at about $4500 a pop. We also bought a PowerEdge 600SC for around 
> $900 with lots of disk space to use as a network backup machine (backing 
> up the 2550s) with Linux software RAID 5. I've also had a crappy old 
> desktop machine running Linux software RAID 1 for a couple of years.

[snip a couple HW/SW RAID horror stories]

Personally, I don't like any kind of "internal" RAID solution (ie.
software or a PCI card).  In either case, if you have a catastrophic
machine failure, it is entirely possible that your drive groups can
be corrupted or lost entirely.

On all of my critical servers, I use external RAID boxes (generally DEC/
Compaq/HP stuff, but we're an old DEC shop).  Most of our stuff now is
on an EMA12000.  6 7-disk shelves on 6 SCSI busses, 2 dual-ported RAID
controllers with failover, two fibre channel switches, and two
fibre channel cards in each server for multipath failover.  This is
WAY overkill for a simple asterisk server, but there are many smaller
solutions.

One that I've used (that I think is out of production now, but there are
replacements for it) is the Compaq Storageworks RA3000.  It's a little
external drive tower - 7 (If I recall correctly) drives, plus an option
to add an expansion module for another 7, single or dual RAID
controllers with failover, dual mirrored cache, etc.  Configure it, and
hook it up to a standard USCSI controller, and it looks just like
one or more regular SCSI drives.

The advantage to external units being that if something catastrophic
happens on the server, I can simply put a SCSI card (or a fibre card,
in the case of the EMA12000) in another machine, connect it to the
external array, and go.  I can lose any piece of the external system
and still be functional.  Also, since it's a standard interface, I
don't even need to have an identical interface card handy - any
compatible SCSI/FC interface will do.

-- 
Matt White                          whitem at arts.usask.ca
Arts and Science Computer Labs      University of Saskatchewan

It sure is Monday... Ain't it a sin
I've gotta work my way thru the week again.
	- Mark Chesnutt..."Sure Is Monday"