[ale] Spec'ing a FreeBSD box, need some help

[Jeff Hubbs]

> The problem I'm having to decide is whether an Ultra 160 RAID card is first
> compaitable with an Ultra 320 SCSI controller. I've seen sites that is
> selling the unit with the Adaptec Ultra 160 so I think that part is fine,
> but I just want to verify.

As far as the OS is concerned, the Ultra 160 SCSI RAID card and the
onboard Ultra 320 SCSI controller are going to be sitting side-by-side;
one won't be depending on the other.

I don't know what you're planning to use the machine for, but I would
definitely want to take advantage of having two Ultra320 controllers
sitting there in addition to the Ultra160 RAID card.  I don't know if
FreeBSD does multiple swap partitions or software RAID, but putting swap
partitions on separate drives across the controllers comes to mind,
especially if this machine is maxed out on RAM but will get pounded on
swap regardless.  Otherwise, I'd want to use them in a software RAID
arrangement (RAID 1 or RAID 0+1, splitting mirrors across the
controllers).  If the machine isn't going to be swapping its brains out,
I might try to put /, /usr, and whatnot on its own volume (RAID 1 or a
3-disk RAID 5) on the RAID card and use the onboard Ultra320 controllers
for RAID 0+1 sets, going for sheer speed with fault tolerance.

- Jeff

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