[ale] Fault Tolerant High Read Rate System Configuration

[Greg Clifton]

Hi Jim,

You do mean PCIe these days, don't you? Being serial point to point data
xfer resolves the bus contention issue, no? Ain't much in the way of
multi-PCI bus mobos to be had any more as the migration to PCIe is in full
swing. I expect PCI will be SO 20th century by Q1 '10.

What about a single 12, 16, or 24 drive RAID controller from 3Ware or Areca
(PCIe x8 native, I believe for both now). I'm sure it is much greater than
PCI (even PCIX @ 133MHz ~ 800mb/s), but what is the bandwidth on PCIe
anyways?

You are basically talking RAID 10 type configuration, no? Using the entire
drive vs. short stroking so no complications in prepping a replacement
drive, good thought.

As Richard suggested, customer is interested in some sort of mirrored/load
balanced/failover setup with 2 systems (if it fits the budget). How to, is
where I am mostly clueless.

Thanks,
Greg

On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 12:24 PM, Jim Kinney <jim.kinney at gmail.com> wrote:

> multi-pci bus (not just multi pci _slot_) mobo with several add-on
> SATA300 cards. Hang fast drives from each card matching the aggregate
> drive throughput to the bandwidth of the pci bus slot. Make pairs of
> drives on different cards be mirrors. Join all mirror pairs into a
> stripped array for speed.
>
> Use entire drive for each mirror slice so any failure is just a drive
> replacement. Add extra cooling for the drives.
>
> On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 11:35 AM, Greg Clifton<gccfof5 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi Guys,
> >
> > I am working on a quote for a board of realtors customer who has ~ 6000
> > people hitting his database, presumably daily per the info I pasted
> below.
> > He wants fast reads and maximum up time, perhaps mirrored systems. So I
> > though I would pick you smart guys brains for any suggestions as to the
> most
> > reliable/economical means of achieving his goals. He is thinking in terms
> of
> > some sort of mirror of iSCSI SAN systems.
> >
> > Currently we are only using 50G of drive space, I do not see going above
> > 500G for many years to come. What we need to do is to maximize IO
> > throughput, primarily read access (95% read, 5% write). We have over
> 6,000
> > people continually accessing 1,132,829 Million (as of today) small (<1M)
> > files.
> >
> > Tkx,
> > Greg Clifton
> > Sr. Sales Engineer
> > CCSI.us
> > 770-491-1131 x 302
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Ale at ale.org
> > http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> >
> >
>
>
>
> --
> --
> James P. Kinney III
> Actively in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness
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