Friday, November 18, 2005

Quest for small server continues...

I'm still working on my quest for a small reliable server.

I was just reading Richard Elling's blog entry on RAS and the X4100/X4200 servers. You should read this - blindingly obvious design features like not putting heat generators like disks in the airflow path for the CPUs. But he also says that most thin servers don't need more than 2 disks. Perhaps this is why I'm having so much trouble finding a server to fit my requirements!

Oh well, having exhausted Sun's catalog, I'm now looking at the likes of the HP DL385 or the Dell PE2850. Both of these are listed in the HCL, which is pretty much essential as I would naturally be running Solaris on the machine.

1 comment:

Peter Tribble said...

Well, yes, the X4100/X4200 support 4 internal drives, which I regard as the minimum for a genuine server. The problem in this case is that I'm after more capacity than Sun's current 73G ceiling will handle, but not enough to make it worth looking at an external array.

It's unfortunate that there's a significant gap between internal storage capacity and external array capacities, and I'm currently slap in the middle of that gap.

(And it will be interesting to see how the storage landscape evolves as ZFS gains traction, as it tilts the balance back towards JBOD.)

Oh, and I'm sorry about shutting down anonymous comments, but spam is too much of a pain.