Re: [K12OSN] Slow Performance

[Ben Mabbott <bmabbott riverdale k12 or us>]

/home needs speed because it's the place where most of the disk access 
is occuring, due to user's docs and system files being there. There 
isn't much that a user can do without something being written to or read 
from /home. That's why if you're using anything beyond 10 or so 
terminals, IDE can't keep up. However, as you said, SCSI is expensive, 
so unless you have the kind of budget we all dream about, generally you 
should only use it where it's needed :)

Your best bet is probably to go with your original plan, but switch what 
you were going to use the drivers for. Use the 73GB SCSI for /home, and 
the 120GB IDE for the rest of the system. IDE can handle the rest. The 
most used files will get loaded into RAM anyway, so the IDE drive won't 
have a whole lot to do after the server boots. This setup will give you 
the best of both worlds, the speed of SCSI where you need it, and the 
economy of IDE for the rest.

Also, your suspision about the e-mail server is correct. E-mail is very 
hard drive intensive; it's pretty much constant disk access. Unless you 
have a *very* small user base IDE probably won't cut it.

-Ben

Mella wrote:
> So, users system files or users documents in /home need speed?
>
> My first planned conf was mirrored 73GB SCSI for system + 120GB mirrored
> IDE for user files and e-mail.
> Now I think, It is better put 3x73GB SCSI RAID5 for system and user
> files an make extra server for e-mail with 2x120GB IDE RAID1 for IMAP
> connection.
>
> Is it correct or users e-mail connection traffic will be also higher
> than IDE can bear?
> USer's mailboxes in outlook can exceed 500MB, incoming e-mail traffic is
> low but trough IMAP they want access his mailboxes tightly :(