On Mon, 12 Jan 2004, Nick Reinking wrote:
It seems to me that one of the biggest problems we seem to have is reliable and speedy hard drives. Perhaps it might be wise to consider possible purchasing an external disk subsystem? Something like the Apple Xserve RAID systems are speedy (lots of internal hardware RAID), reliable (easy to swap out disks), and expandable (up to 3.5TB, 1TB in the cheapest configuration). If the database server dies, it should be fairly easy to plug the external disk system into another machine.
"Like" is the key word there. 6k$ for a [censored] Apple logo is insane. I've bought similar hardware for less than 1/10th that price. If all you need is a drive shelf, start searching eBay. (I can recommendations if anyone cares.)
If you grab a fibre channel shelf (or more than one), I have plenty of drives for the cause (14x18G and 10x9.1G drives gathering dust.) I'd offer an entire Eurologic shelf, but you can find those local in CA easier and faster than shipping across the country. (6 of mine came from Canada :-))
--Ricky