[rescue] SGI, Origin 200, and speed?

[James Braid]

Kevin said the following on 30/04/2004 6:29 a.m.:
> Regarding PC "servers", point taken.
> 
> I'm not usually a fan of software RAID except maybe for RAID 0. 
> How much of a performance hit would you be looking at with soft
> RAID 5 under vs hardware RAID 5 (under IRIX)?

There is no software RAID 5 for IRIX ... XVM (the new volume manager) 
and XLV (the old volume manager) both support mirroring, striping, and 
concatenation. But you cant do root disk mirroring without an expensive 
  (I think it was close to NZD $10K) license from SGI.

We use SGI fibre channel storage at $work which is basically rebadged 
LSI Logic RAID controllers with Zyratex chassis (and a massive pricetag :(

> On Thu, 29 Apr 2004 12:04:57 -0400
> Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
>>   "Decent PC server" is a double oxymoron.
>>
>>   RAID options...hmm, there is a 68-pin SCSI port on the box,
>>   and three 
>>PCI slots into which you can plug supported FC adapters.  There
>>are six internal drive bays, and there is a software RAID
>>package available for IRIX.

There is no external SCSI on the Origin 200, which is kind of sucky :(

One internal controller is used for the internal hotswap bays, the other 
is used for the two 5.25" bays.

Cheers, James