RAID and volume structures.

[mischief]

I have a hypothetical set of questions to ask:

With a Sonnet ATA 133 RAID card I can do a minimum of 2 volumes using a maximum of 4 drives.

Can I sub-divide those 2 RAID volumes with partitions and boot from those sub partitions individually?

How many sub partitions can OS X handle per drive channel/physical drive before it goes nuts?

WTF are the functional differences between the various RAID structures and how did they evolve?

In a mixed (OS 9, OS X, OS X server and VPC) environment what are the least problematic volume structures with decent redundancy and efficiency?

Which OS X-compatible disk utility will do smaller block sizes?

Assuming I use a PCI card with HW RAID support what are my options of the above structures?

 

[AlphaTech]

If you want performance more then data redundancy, go with RAID 0 (striping), IF you need your data backed up in case a drive fails go with RAID 1 (mirroring). Personally, I would use RAID 0 and make it one partition (per array). What sized drives are you thinking about using?? You want to have all identical drives when you set up the RAID, otherwise it will go down to the smallest, slowest one in the array. If you will be creating two arrays anyway, put OS X, and OS 9 (with VPC if you must) on one(RAID 0), and then OS X server on the other (RAID 1). You may not be able to do that, then again, you might. Read all the literature that comes with the RAID card BEFORE you start configuring and setting things up.

I do not know of any utility that will make the block sizes any smaller then what formatting in HFS extended will do. I would suspect the compatibility and stability of anything that made it less then the 4k you get that way. What do you need it smaller then that for??

 

[mischief]

OK.

All ATA 100 60GB Maxtor/Quantum drives for all 4 slots.

There is the slim possability of ATA 133 120's.

This is a shoestring server. It may wind up being a 450 sawtooth getting jacked up to a dual Apollo based upgrade if Sonnet follows Powerlogix into the new chips after MWNY.

In that case the projected machine would be:

Dual 750G4 apollo

ATI RADEON 8500 AGP

1.5Gb RAM

(2*60GB) 120 GB RAID 1 volume for network accessable files. (2*60GB) 120 GB RAID 0 for general use and bootability.

I have some carbon apps that're somewhat less OS X compliant than they claim to be so I'm keeping them penned in in classic for the time being. These apps are absolutely neccesary to business and have serious memory leak issues when run in X. As a consequence the volume set to RAID 1 should probably NOT be set to UFS correct?

Ah yes: how do I set a volume to be LAN accessable to all users in a group in OS X via Gigabit ethernet without going insan if I still want to use that same machine for drafting? Assuming I'll be booting from the drive 0 volume and keeping my apps on that volume as well.

 

[AlphaTech]

RAID 1 (mirroring) uses the two drives as one, but you don't get the doubling of size you do from RAID 0. Use two 60GB drives and you see it as one 60GB volume. That is the price you pay for the mirorring and data protection.

four 60GB drives with two arrays of a pair each
RAID 0=120GB
RAID 1=60GB

"As a consequence the volume set to RAID 1 should probably NOT be set to UFS correct?"

No, you format the volumes from within the OS, no matter the RAID configuration.

Again, read the manual before setting it all up.

 

[mischief]

my bad.

You're right of course. I was doing 3 things at once.

I was thinking aloud with the UFS comment.

Is there anything beyond permissions to be set for a volume that's to be LAN accessable?


BTW: don't you me or I'll be forced to you.

 

[AlphaTech]

Re: my bad.

Originally posted by mischief
You're right of course. I was doing 3 things at once.

I was thinking aloud with the UFS comment.

Is there anything beyond permissions to be set for a volume that's to be LAN accessable?

Keep that monkey in your pants mister... or else.

You will just need to set up the server with the LAN/user permissions as you would normally with a server. If you are not 100% on what you are doing, then read up on it first. Set a shared folder/volume on the server and go with it.

How many people do you intend to give access to this server???

 

[mischief]

Re: Re: my bad.

Originally posted by AlphaTech


Keep that monkey in your pants mister... or else.

You will just need to set up the server with the LAN/user permissions as you would normally with a server. If you are not 100% on what you are doing, then read up on it first. Set a shared folder/volume on the server and go with it.

How many people do you intend to give access to this server???

OK. Just permissions. No sweat.

Just 4 guys total.

Up to seven later. We need to centralize parts and job files so I don't kill anyone for the incredibly ****ed up cluster**** of a mess we have now.

3 G4's and soon to be a new plotter, potential upgrade from 100 base Ethernet to Gigabit w/CAT6. We have ADSL (shrug) and 4 60 GB ATA 100 MAXTORs that're only a year old.

there are enough drives to go around . If I cannibalize the oldest machine (mine) I could do a reasonable server. I'm gathering data to price a solution against an xServe.

The xServe is looking competative.