Well supported, reliable NICs for Redhat Linux/Fedora?

[dsavage at peaknet.net]

On Wednesday November 19, 2003 Jesse Keating wrote:
> On Wednesday 19 November 2003 11:28, dsavage at peaknet.net wrote:
>> Anyone
>> betting their business on big cheap EIDE drives rather than SCSI
>> better have (and religiously use) first class tape backup systems.
>> They're gonna need 'em because the failure rates for EIDE drives used
>> in 24/7 servers are between two to three orders of magnitude higher
>> than SCSI.
>
> Given the reliability of these "cheap big EIDE servers" vs the cost of a
>  SCSI system providing the same capacity, it's no wonder people are
> making the switch.  The price difference is somewhere in the 8 orders
> of magnitude.

Jesse,

Order of magnitude = integer power of 10

The MTBF for SCSI drives is typically 100-1000 (2-3 OoM) times greater
than EIDE. Incidentally, this has very little to do with the I/O
interface. SCSI drives are designed to run indefinitely at 100% duty
cycles. They're engineered to much tighter tolerances and fabricated from
far more durable materials than your typical mass market EIDE drive.

If these new SATA drives are truly intended for 24/7 server use, I would
expect them to be as expensive as SCSI. On the other hand, if they're
really just EIDE with a new plug, then you'd have to be crazy to build
SATA RAID arrays without features like automatic failover sparing. When
you surround a drive with that kind of technology, much of its cost
advantage would evaporate.

--Doc Savage
  Fairview Heights, IL