Re: [PLUG] Recommend: cheap server suitable for virtualization?

["Eric at Lucii.org" <eric@lucii.org>]

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On 06/25/2012 04:04 PM, brainbuz wrote:
> I run a fairly robust virtualization environment on a quad core amd
processor in a mid-grade consumer motherboard.
> 
> I'm running KVM and have had at times a lot of instability, I recommend running a current kernel as it seems to have settled down quite a bit with 3.2.
> 
> For a server I do not recommend any kind of overclocking or unlocking, you have no way of knowing whether your locked core is defective. If you can get ECC RAM at close to the price of standard ram I recommend it, but it is often way more expensive.
> 
> One thing I splurged a little on was an Adaptec RAID 6405E. If you're thinking about any kind of RAID, do it in hardware, and $200 for a real Adaptec SATA RAID controller that works out of the box with current Ubuntu is a no brainer. Yep you're going to buy a $100 MB and then spend $200 on the disk controller. When I added the Adaptec the system got a lot more table than with fake-raid and the performance also improved. In fact for a database application an SSD did not result in a big performance gain vs the RAID-1 7200 RPM hard drives.

I have use 'fake RAID' for years with no difficulty.
I have 2 potential problems with HW RAID:

1. If years down the road your RAID controller fails you will be
unable to access your data until you replace that controller.  In some
cases you will require an exact equivalent for it to work.  Many years
ago I ran into this scenario with a controller that was no longer
available.  As I recall a used controller was obtained from ebay.

2.  There are two types of "HW" RAID.  The lower end RAID controllers
have a ROM but no processor to speak of.  The RAID functionality is loaded
into the OS from the ROM (If I understand correctly.)  The more expensive
ones are true HW RAID in that processing actually takes place on the RAID
card.  I don't know about the 6450E but at $200 I suspect it's in the
latter category.

Eric
- -- 
#  Eric Lucas
#
#                "Oh, I have slipped the surly bond of earth
#                 And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings...
#                                        -- John Gillespie Magee Jr

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