Fail Safe Server

[nettamer]

I had posted this in Win2000 Server forum, but may be more appropriate here.

I want to build a failsafe server. I plan to use ABIT or IWILL motherboards with built-in IDE RAID. The system will have 3 exact hard drives. 2 of the hard drives will be exact mirror of each other. The third one will be a back up drive using Ghost backing up nightly. Has anyone built silmilar system or have better ideas, comments, inputs on motherboards, please posts. Thanks.

 

[gargouille]

I'm about to, but I plan on having a reserve power supply in it...and use more drives than that (probably 5) and any other thoughtful things I'm counting on the regulars
'round here to add.
The customer's already acquired the RAID controller, tho, so it won't be on the motherboard.
Interesting project.
There's also a local ISP owner with 20 years experience that will hopefully let me pick his head.
His guys build all their servers.

 

[nettamer]

Thanks.

I just thought this would be an inexpensive way to go. IDE drives are cheap nowaday. The drives are all in slide bays so they can be easily switched in and out.

I am looking for any comments on the drawbacks of the system, the ABIT IDE Raid, and any suggestions on a better back-up system, such as using Veritas instead of Ghost. Anyone experienced with any of the above will be appreciated.

 

[gargouille]

There's an FAQ at faq602-2590 about a reliable server type (altho it looks as if you may have already acquired some of the hardware...)

 

[firewolfrl]

are you going to raid-0 two of the drives?

you are better off mirroring in a raid-0/1 platform
(abit onboard setup)
raid-0 offers no redundancy in case of a crash... its all or nothing
raid-5 is the most stable. (you can remove a corrupt drive and install a new drive without data loss)
stay away from onboard raid... if you have to flash the motherboard BIOS the raid bios is flashed too.
this can result in a corrupt mirror and loss of time and data.
you can have more options and more configurability with a raid controller separate from the motherboard.