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From: Eugen Leitl <eugen@leitl.org>
To: "Stephen D. Williams" <sdw@lig.net>
Cc: Gary Lawrence Murphy <garym@canada.com>,
	Udhay Shankar N <udhay@pobox.com>, Adam Rifkin <adam@KnowNow.com>,
	<FoRK@xent.com>
Subject: Re: storage bits
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Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 11:18:33 +0200 (CEST)

On Mon, 16 Sep 2002, Stephen D. Williams wrote:

> To make what work?  I already pointed out that a single drive is
> comparable between IDE/SCSI.

Alas, that's wrong. Both the drives are faster (10..15 krpm vs. ~7 krpm,
faster seek), and the EIDE protocol is ridiculously dumb (queing;
disconnect).
 
> I think you're wrong with recent releases.  I'll check this week. 
> There's also JFS and XFS.

None of them are production quality. Right now only ext2 and ext3 qualify.  
It will take a good while (a year, or two) before we can trust anything
else.
 
> >SCSI has got advantages still, particular if it comes to off-shelf 
> >high-density racks.
> >
> Check out RaidZone.com.

Have you looked inside a dual-CPU 1U Dell? Three drives are easy to get 
in. Anything else would require a redesign, and would in nontrivial 
thermal engineering issues.
 
> A number of vendors are putting the Promise IDE hardware on the
> motherboard.  All that remains is the proper drive socket.

I can't think of a single major vendor who sells 1U systems with hardware
EIDE RAID.

> Additionally, you can get hardware IDE raid as a pair of drive bays or
> even an IDE-IDEx2 controller that can be screwed into a 1U chassis.

I believe you that stuff can be found, if one is looking for it. However, 
I wouldn't put this into production unless I've had that system hanging in 
the local rack under simulated load for a half a year.


