[rescue] Prices... Amazing

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Sun, 01 May 2005 @ 16:01 -0500, Jonathan C. Patschke said:

> AXi motherboard, big Antec case, cheap SCSI boot drive, Linux or BSD,
> supported SATA controller, tons o' cheap disk.  If you want Solaris, I'd
> presume that there are some Macintosh SATA cards that will show up as
> either IDE or SCSI under Solaris.  For -just- a fileserver, an AXi is
> plenty strong.

That's a good idea, and awhile back I did look for some.  I passed up a
deal to get several really cheap.  I wish I'd gone for it, even if I had
to store them awhile.

I'd like to hear from someone who knows they'll work with SATA first
though.

Of course, I might have to consider making it run databases and
applications too.  Space constraints are an issue I've not fully
resolved yet, I just hope to.  I don't need tremendous hourspower
for the database work that I do.  Maybe it would be OK.

After all, an SS5 is currently doing DNS, Squid, PostgreSQL, MySQL, NFS
server, and mail server duties... :)

Another system that's interesting is some of the HP servers that have 5
drive bays in them in a tower case.  Not as plentiful as they used to
be.

Anyone use them?  I think they were called Netserver or something.  Kind
of a beige/gray case, tower PC height, about twice as deep, and usually
two SCSI busses.

> , and gradually swap the 4GB drives for those cheap half-height 50GB
> Seagates that show up every so often.  That's my current plan.

My plan was to find a 711 and use half-height drives.  I'm aiming for a
200GB raid for now, which will hold me for awhile.  The more
the merrier of course.

That's why I thought about just using SATA.

I'm already using a pair of 80GB Seagate NCQ SATA drives as a mirror in
my Linux PC, and they seem to work well so far.

I feel tainted even with that...

> I have the BA370, the cans, the FC switch, and (soon) the SOCAL+ I/O
> cards for my E4000.  A fellow lister just offered me a disk-tray to
> hold the boot drives for the E4000.  As soon as I can afford to buy
> $35 50GB drives like a madman, I'll have 1.2TB of storage.

That will take more power than I have right now... :)

Neat setup though.  Lot's of geek factor there.

-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["I wish life was not so short. Languages
take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about." - J.
R. R. Tolkien]