Re: Storage

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

 



At 09:59 PM 3/16/02, you wrote:


>> I've run dozens of SCSI drives over the past 10 years, many on
>> servers that run for years, and I can only recall 2 drives failing, [...]
>
>Heat is a big factor. Few bother to check the airflow and temps around the
>HD's. Heat is hard on the bearings/lube. If one reads the environmental
>specs for the drives and cools them, they generally last longer.

I used to build custom server systems and these two points are key. Many
cases come with no fans other than what's on the power supply and the CPU.
However they usually have slots for at least two extra fans.

My first step is to max out the number of fans the case can support and
arrange the airflow in through the front filter and out from the sides and
rear. Full tower cases can take (and should have) seven extra fans - two front
inflows, a rear outflow, and two outflow on each side of the bay stack. Granted
it makes for a noisier box. 7200 and 10,000 RPM drives should always be mounted
where there is direct airflow over their top and bottom surfaces. The reason
for so many fans is that fans fail. Lose a fan on a single fan system and the
parts cook. Check that all the fans are spinning when the front filter gets
vacuumed once a year.

Get the biggest power supply available for your case.

IDE and ATA drives have severe price pressure because that's what consumers
look at. It's less pronounced with SCSI drives because that market niche
has greater concern for reliability. A good metric is whether a given SCSI
drive has been qualified by a RAID array manufacturer for use in their
products. High-end users should consider a RAID-5 array with a battery
backed-up controller. The battery is necessary to push the uncommitted writes
to disk in case of a power failure.

Cheers,
Paul

-
Turn off HTML mail features. Keep quoted material short. Use accurate
subject lines. http://www.leben.com/lists for list instructions.


[Index of Archives]     [Yosemite News]     [Yosemite Photos]     [Scanners]     [Gimp]     [Gimp Users]
  Powered by Linux