Internal 8410 HD vs. XP256

[Michael Simone]

This may be a dumb question, but it never hurts to ask. We're installing a brandy-new rp8410 with dual internal 72Gb hard drives, and we have an aging-but-solid XP256 in house. I'm trying to determine what would be more efficient to use for storage of web pages and cache files, the internal drives, or the XP via fibre channel (no fabric). I can't really tell from the spec sheets, and I'd be interested what everyone thinks.

I need about 25Gb for pages, graphics and cache files (cached pages) that the web server will serve up. I've got 16Gb RAM in the machine, so I'm thinking it might be worth trying to store everything locally and leave the XP out of the situation.

Any suggestions?

[Joshua Scott]

What else are you running on the rp8400?

If you allocate about 16GB for vg00, then give another 20GB or so for the DB you run, then it leaves you around 31GB free for your files (I am assuming you are mirroring the 2 internal drives). In that case I would use the internal drives to store the data. You could always get a couple more internal drives for the rp8400. I would think that the internal drives would be fast enough (160MB/s). I can't really see that you would need the extra performance/reliability that the XP offers if you are storing such a small amount of information. Plus, you would probably want the XP under support which, if you don't have it right now, would certainly cost a signifigant amount.

[Tim Sanko]

Michael,

I might be persuaded to put everything local for these reasons.

1. The ethernet connection to the intranet/internet will still be the bottleneck. unless you put in a a hoard of t3 connection to the internet and have all GB ethernet connections, the webserving will be slower than the access...

2. I prefer EMC storage. The xp256 is still slow, but it is reliable.

3. Unless you mirror the drives, go with the xp256.

Tim

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi Michael,

Depends on where you want the efficiency - speed or space.

Use the array for the former & the internal for the latter.

Anytime you can get the app binaries off of the vg00 drive(s) speed will increase. Although you may be tempted to use these *huge* vg00 drives because of all the space, I wouldn't do it simply because if the app blows chunks badly you run the risk of corrupting vg00. And that is not a good thing.

And now to my rant...
WHY does HP think we need HUGE boot disks.
Personnally 18GB is fine for me & I can tolerate 36GB. But 72GB is ridiculous. If this was my system, I'd round up some 18GB disks & use them to boot/root. Then use the 72s for non-vg00 drives.

Rgds,
Jeff