recommendation for RAID with ADG for DL380?

[CA707630]

I'm about to purchase a DL380G2 and need a RAID setup. Redundancy is of primary importance.

I'm thinking 6x72GB drives, with 5 in ADG and one as a spare, giving me 3x72Gb capacity. Is this being overly cautious - should I delete the spare?

So, any recommendations for a LOW cost SA? My limited research says a 5304 will work and it's dirt cheap on the used market.

Any others I should consider?

[Chris Rosan]

Arthur,

I'm not sure if the backplane in the DL380G2 is Ultra3 or Ultra320, but the SA5302 is only Ultra3. I'd suggest the SA6402. Adding the extra ram is good, but the batteries for the cache tend to fail a lot so buy a few of them. If the battery is failed the accelleration is disabled.

That said, if the G2 has an onboard raid controller (i've never had a DL380G2 so I don't know) then that should be fine.

Also, I wouldn't bother with ADG. I recently re-installed a server that HAD ADG, and just had Raid5, and the performance was heaps better. Online spare is a good idea if you can spare the space. I'd do the spare before ADG, due to the performance costs.

I had a server running non-stop for 2 years (think it was restarted twice), with ADG & on-line spare, and it never lost a hard drive. Just do the spare.

Make sure you get 2 power supplies, and the redundant fan's.

[CA707630]

1. The G2 supports U320 drives but my budget doesn't.

2. SA-6402 is too costly, even used.

3. Don't want to use onboard 5i. I need ability to replace if it fails.

4. No ADG, huh? I've been running RAID5 for a few years but a recent "glitch" has me scared enough to move to ADG. The glitch is probably Win2K's fault resulting in a corrupt registry but I assumed the added security of ADG was worth it. I'll rethink this.

5. Performance over redundancy is not preferred. This is my home business system and data loss is primary concern. Heck, I've been using a Dell 1300, dual P3-600, and 1GB RAM for a while and it does the job. Also have an external RAID box but prefer to delete that.