[ale] New server setup

[Jeff Hubbs]

Dan -

I have a Dell PowerEdge 2450 here with RH 6.2 on it.  It's similar to the
one you're getting.  At the time, I had to go thru some #@$(*& to get Dell's
binary-only driver for the PERC/3si controller installed (I understand it's
folded into RH7.1 now), but once that was done, I was thrilled with the RAID
controller - it has another layer of abstraction to it that lets you build
multiple RAID volumes, each with its own level, using the same set of
physical disks.  It's not something you'd want to take advantage of if
you're trying to go for speed, speed, speed but it does allow you do pull
some performance *improving* (as opposed to maximizing) by using different
volumes of different RAID types for different things.  For instance, on this
machine with four physical drives, which is primarily a file server, I put
the swap partition on a RAID 10 (or is it 0+1) volume while the /home
partition is a RAID 5 volume.

The gotcha here is that you have to keep in mind that with things set up
like this, the RAID 10 volume and the RAID 5 volume are sharing the same
sets of heads, so there are going to be operational regimes where you can
feel pain from having done this.  It turns out that, since this became first
and foremost a file server, I needn't have bothered with the RAID 10 volume
for swap.  Its RAM mostly goes for cache.

I tell you, ever since I first started working with file servers c. 1989
(Banyan VINES!), it's just been amazing to me what a nice, fast, capacious
file server on a good network can do for an organization.  Of course, now,
I'm thinking more in terms of serving up OSses for diskless PCs and
distributed file systems than I am the simple
map-a-drive-letter-to-a-"home"-directory, but even that latter facility does
amazing stuff for people.

- Jeff

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dan Newcombe [mailto:Newcombe at mordor.clayton.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2001 10:46 PM
> To: Gary MacKay
> Cc: ALE
> Subject: Re: [ale] New server setup
> 
> 
> On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, Gary MacKay wrote:
> > I'm setting up a new server that I plan to host several 
> domains (web and
> > mail) on. What is the prefered method of install? What I 
> mean is, should
> > I stick to the rpm's or custom compile all software? Yes, I'm using
> > RedHat 7.1, (forget the flames, etc.), because the question 
> applies to
> > any distro I think. Should I use the standard package 
> manager (ie. rpm,
> > pkg_add, whatever) or compile from source? 
> 
> As soon as Dell gets my new machine here, I'll be putting 
> RH7.1 on it (no
> flames here!)  I usually install all the machines the same - 
> install the
> BARE minimum, and then add things as I need them.  Usually I put the
> netutils, gcc, stuff like that on right away, and whatever they need.
> This way I know exactly what is on there.  For most of the basic stuff
> (xinetd, openssl, etc...) it works fine, as there are not that many
> things that I would need to compile differently.
>  
> > Apache
> 
> This I always compile seperatly to make sure I get the options I want.
> 
> > PHP
> 
> Same thing here...there are so many things that I need in PHP 
> that RH's
> rpm's don't have compiled in.
> 
> >    Hardware info:
> > HP e800 PIII 866
> > 640mg ram
> > 9.1gig SCSI (/dev/sda)
> > 18gig SCSI  (/dev/sdb)
> 
> Oh yeah...   Dell PowerEdge 2550 w/ 2 PIII at 1Ghz, 1GB ram, dual nics
> (10/100 and 10/100/1000), 4x36GB Hardware RAID5 internal, 
> 3x73GB Hardware
> RAID5 external.   Should make lynx fly :)
> 
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