Recomendations for a Hardware Raid Solution.

Hi Folks,

I am thinking of implementing a simple Home Raid Solution for my OS/2 
"Server" machine. Performance is not the prime issue here,
reliability
of the Data is much more important. I guess I am looking for  -
   1. A Hardware based solution. It must be able to be relocated to 
another machine easily.
   2. Nothing more complex than simple mirroring of drives is 
required.
   3. Either internal or external enclosure systems would be fine 
(prefer internal).
   4. The Host interface could be either SATA or PATA (prefer SATA).
   5. The Drive interface could be either SATA or PATA (prefer SATA).
   6. The drives should be able to be of different size and 
manufacturer.
   7. Hot Swappable drives would be nice, but are not essential.
   8. If the Array needs management, then I would like to be able to 
do it via a Web browser interface on ANY host environment.

And lastly, must be available locally (New Zealand).........;-)

All ideas or comments welcome.

Cheers....................pk.


-- 

Peter wrote:
> Hi Folks,
> 
> I am thinking of implementing a simple Home Raid Solution for my OS/2 
> "Server" machine. Performance is not the prime issue here,
reliability
> of the Data is much more important. I guess I am looking for  -
>    1. A Hardware based solution. It must be able to be relocated to 
> another machine easily.
>    2. Nothing more complex than simple mirroring of drives is 
> required.
>    3. Either internal or external enclosure systems would be fine 
> (prefer internal).
>    4. The Host interface could be either SATA or PATA (prefer SATA).
>    5. The Drive interface could be either SATA or PATA (prefer SATA).
>    6. The drives should be able to be of different size and 
> manufacturer.
>    7. Hot Swappable drives would be nice, but are not essential.
>    8. If the Array needs management, then I would like to be able to 
> do it via a Web browser interface on ANY host environment.
> 
> And lastly, must be available locally (New Zealand).........;-)
> 
> All ideas or comments welcome.
> 
> Cheers....................pk.
> 
> 
Hi Peter,

If I was you I would look into Promise raid controllers. They are in 
PATA and SATA available. Ofcourse the more feature's you want te more 
expensive. Further, if you ever need to manage you have to reboot the 
computer to get into the card's BIOS. They are for two and four 
harddisks available RAID0 and RAID1.

Hi again Folks,

> I am thinking of implementing a simple Home Raid Solution for my OS/2 
> "Server" machine. 

An alternative thats been suggested is that I consider a NAS solution,
rather than host based Raid.  

As I am looking more towards a "backup" solution, rather than a high 
performance solution, a NAS may actually be a better answer to my 
particular problem, as its more data integrity that concerns me, 
rather than  performance. 

I will start investigating a NAS solution, however I am making an 
assumption here that something like Peer Services (I have both Warp 4 
and eCS machines on the LAN) would be used for the Network component.

All comments welcome.

Thanks.............pk.


-- 

Peter wrote:
> Hi again Folks,
> 
>> I am thinking of implementing a simple Home Raid Solution for my OS/2 
>> "Server" machine. 
> 
> An alternative thats been suggested is that I consider a NAS solution,
> rather than host based Raid.  
> 
> As I am looking more towards a "backup" solution, rather than a
high 
> performance solution, a NAS may actually be a better answer to my 
> particular problem, as its more data integrity that concerns me, 
> rather than  performance. 
> 
> I will start investigating a NAS solution, however I am making an 
> assumption here that something like Peer Services (I have both Warp 4 
> and eCS machines on the LAN) would be used for the Network component.
> 
> All comments welcome.
> 
> Thanks.............pk.
> 
> 
Peter,

A NAS is usually external :-) You asked for an internal solution.
Either way, you can use NAS for backup, but then again if it is only 
backup I advice you to take an external harddisk equal or bigger to the 
one you have internal. You than only need to turn this external harddisk 
on in the event you  want to copy to or from the harddisk, in all other 
cases you just leave the external harddisk off. A NAS is, as the name 
already mention, an device for storage normally not used for backup. 
It's up to you but I would go for the external harddisk.
btw NAS devices are availeble, here in Holland, from about euro 300,00 
and up. Depending on you needs, two harddisks or four? RAID5 or not?
All these make the price. If you want to buy a NAS, buy one with RAID1 
with two harddisks. Most devices are configurable via a webbrowser so in 
that it will suite your needs.

Peter schrieb:
> 
> Hi Folks,
> 
> I am thinking of implementing a simple Home Raid Solution for my OS/2
> "Server" machine. Performance is not the prime issue here,
reliability
> of the Data is much more important. I guess I am looking for  -
>    1. A Hardware based solution. It must be able to be relocated to
> another machine easily.
>    2. Nothing more complex than simple mirroring of drives is
> required.
>    3. Either internal or external enclosure systems would be fine
> (prefer internal).
>    4. The Host interface could be either SATA or PATA (prefer SATA).
>    5. The Drive interface could be either SATA or PATA (prefer SATA).
>    6. The drives should be able to be of different size and
> manufacturer.
>    7. Hot Swappable drives would be nice, but are not essential.
>    8. If the Array needs management, then I would like to be able to
> do it via a Web browser interface on ANY host environment.
> 
> And lastly, must be available locally (New Zealand).........;-)
> 
> All ideas or comments welcome.
> 

Keep one fact in mind.
Hardware raid hostadapters are not interchangable since they use
different layouts.

So if your rardware raid hostadapter dies you have to find a comptable
one or your data is lost.