Online Capacity Expansion (Gone South) with Openfiler and a 3Ware RAID card
February 20, 2007 by Jason · 5 Comments
If you've been reading my blog then you'd know that I use OpenFiler for my home storage needs. When I originally provisioned the system it was with a pretty beefy box. One thing I went short on though was storage. I purchased a high-end RAID card (3Ware 9590SE-16ML) but then proceeded to only install 3 drives (Western Digital RE2 500 GB). I did this for a bunch of reasons, but the most important are that, 1. hard drives cost money and they wern't currently needed, 2. hard drive prices go down, and 3. the raid controller I purchased supports Online Capacity Expansion (OCE).
A few days ago I noticed that my storage array was about 80% full. As such, I decided to order another 500GB RE2 (for $40 less than the original three, proving point #2) and test out 3Ware's OCE.
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“Servers” and IDE/SATA Hard Drives
December 29, 2006 by Jason · Leave a Comment
As has already been mentioned a few times, The company I work for runs quite a few vBulletin forums. As such, I spend a decent amount of time over on the vbulletin.com forums, particularly in the vBulletin Hosting Options and Server Configuration sections. Lately, however, I've noticed a disturbing trend that is really starting to bug me, especially when I see it from people who should probably know better. That trend is to spend $500+ per month on a server and then saddle it with an IDE or SATA drive (or perhaps 2 in a RAID 1 mirror if they're going "all out") because they offer "more than enough space".
When, exactly, did it become acceptable to put a drive made for light, single-user use for a few hours per day into a situation where it would be hammered by dozens, if not hundreds, of simultaneous connections from all around the planet 24/7/365? It's like buying a Ferrari minus the engine and then tossing the inline-4 from a Hyundai Accent inside.