[asterisk-users] capacity

[Drew Gibson]

Having ventured high enough and far enough to view the curvature of the 
Earth and having stayed up late enough long enough (why do disks only 
fail at the weekend?) to rebuild and restore RAID 5 sets, I proffer the 
following (not so) Humble Opinion .....

Dual power supplies, two thumbs up

but RAID 5 is only good for reducing storage costs on large volumes of 
data. It reduces performance and reliability over RAID 1. Don't put the 
OS on RAID 5 unless you like rebuilding servers from bare metal. It's 
much easier to rebuild and restore the data on RAID 5 sets if the OS is 
already up and running.

Your OS and other system critical files (Asterisk) should be on RAID 1 
for performance, redundancy and cost reasons.

More disks = higher cost and higher chance of failure.

Asterisk in general does not need much disk storage. The minimum drive 
size available in a new server tends to be overkill. Two drives as RAID 
1 gives you redundancy and performance. Adding a third drive for RAID 5 
adds cost, increases complexity and reduces reliability just to add 
storage capacity that you don't really need. (but the reseller WILL make 
more money and impress you with their command of the big words and 
acronyms on the spec sheet.)

If and only if you need to store many hundreds of gigs of data (eg. 
recording a very large volume of calls) then RAID 5 becomes useful (or 
RAID 10 or RAID n). You should add this "bulk storage" IN ADDITION TO 
the mirrored pair holding the OS.

regards,

Drew


Steve Totaro wrote:
> And I can post a link that shows a bunch of guys think the earth is
> flat with a 5/10 google ranking also (like the barf guys).
> http://www.alaska.net/~clund/e_djublonskopf/Flatearthsociety.htm
>
> I usually just call my guy at CDW and give him my needs, he is a
> former techie gone sales.  He puts together a quote and emails it to
> me for approval.
>
> I find HP server are very robust and rock solid at a decent price
> point (IBM as well).  I like the 380 because you get six hot swap scsi
> bays and redundant power supplies in a 2u profile, also, Digium and
> Sangoma T1 cards have never given me an issue.
>
> Many on this list love Supermicro, I have yet to try them but I will
> in the near future.  I have not heard a single complaint, only rave
> reviews.
>
> I guess my original point was going for redundancy as far as storage
> and power supplies with your dollar, not the fastest proc or maxed out
> RAM that will not be needed.  Regardless of the actual hardware or
> RAID setup, that is the angle I suggest you take.  4k - 6k students
> will require quite a bit of storage.
>
> Thanks,
> Steve Totaro
>
> On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 9:38 AM, Ron Joffe <rjoffe at yahoo.com> wrote:
>   
>> On Tuesday 18 March 2008 22:12, Steve Totaro wrote:
>>  > For your use, I would go for a RAID 5
>>
>>  I would highly recommend against a raid 5 set. I can give you more details if
>>  you are interested, but these guys have most if it down : www.baarf.com see
>>  the link on the left on "why should I not use Raid 5"
>>
>>  Ron
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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-- 
Drew Gibson

Systems Administrator
OANDA Corporation
www.oanda.com