[Linux-cluster] WebFarm using RedHat cluster suite ?

[Eric Anderson]

Marc Grimme wrote:
> Hello,
> I think the best way to tell what storage or infrastructure would be the best 
> is to know more about your current setup and what issues with that you want 
> to get ahead of.
> For example: if you really think about using iscsi, I don't think that SCSI or 
> SATA drives make a big difference - depending on how many drives you use. But 
> if all webservers currently have locally attached disk drives you want scale 
> too linar with exchanging and IDE/parallel-SCSI Bus with an network topology 
> using Ethernet. 
> But my opinion is: if you have a lot of I/Os make yourself mostly independent 
> from the latency of an ethernet and rethink about using Fibre-Channel with 
> GFS.
>   

Honestly, ethernet latencies (especially on gigabit ethernet) are lower 
than fiber channel latencies, so this statement doesn't really hold up. 

If you want very fast speeds, get an iSCSI array, populate it with 15k 
RPM scsi disks with big caches, max the cache out on the array, and set 
it up for a RAID0+1 (or RAID10 depending on the implementor).  If you 
want fast speed, but not a big price, you can notch down to 10K scsi 
disks, or use 15k scsi disks and a raid 5, etc, and keep notching down 
until it fits your budget and needs. 

I agree here though that we really need to know a few things:

- what kind of traffic is this?
- size of the files most commonly used
- total data size (how much space you need)
- budget
- demands (availability/performance/etc)

Eric





> But the best advices could be made if you make your current setup and the 
> things you want to achieve more clearly.
>
> Regards Marc.
>
> On Wednesday 18 January 2006 22:01, FM wrote:
>   
>> Thanks for the reply,
>> I read about SATA storage but we sync from lan to dmz, so there is lots
>> of r/w.
>>
>> Michael Will wrote:
>>     
>>> I am surprised you use SCSI drives on the storage if
>>> you are price sensitive, usually SATA is the better
>>> bang for the buck unless you are doing databases with
>>> lots of small read and writes.
>>>
>>> Michael
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: linux-cluster-bounces at redhat.com
>>> [mailto:linux-cluster-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of FM
>>> Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2006 12:34 PM
>>> To: Redhat Cluster
>>> Subject: [Linux-cluster] WebFarm using RedHat cluster suite ?
>>>
>>> Hello everybody,
>>>
>>> Is redhat cluster suite (RHEL 4 ) a good candidate for a webfarm ?
>>> My setup would be : several servers (1U AMd dual core) connected to
>>> iscsi storage array.
>>>
>>> Is Iscsi a good choice (SAN prices are too high for us) for hardware ?
>>> Our network is GB.
>>> We will have SCSI 10KRPM + read and write cache on the SCSI card + RAID5
>>> thanks !
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Linux-cluster mailing list
>>> Linux-cluster at redhat.com
>>> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-cluster
>>>
>>> --
>>> Linux-cluster mailing list
>>> Linux-cluster at redhat.com
>>> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-cluster
>>>       
>> --
>> Linux-cluster mailing list
>> Linux-cluster at redhat.com
>> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-cluster
>>     
>
>   


-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric Anderson        Sr. Systems Administrator        Centaur Technology
Anything that works is better than anything that doesn't.
------------------------------------------------------------------------