[OpenAFS] openafs fileservers in VMware ESX

[Dj Merrill]

Matthew Cocker wrote:
> Do you use the Dell powervaults and any of the scsi perc raid cards? We 
> do and they have been a huge problem. Not just for us but all over the 
> university. They seem to work better for windows but one of the windows 
> shops also lost a server last year to a single failed drive in a raid5 
> set which then failed to rebuild.
> 
> We had some thing like 80 dell servers and the plain old servers work 
> fine, it was just the add in raid cards and powervaults that caused the 
> issues.

	Current Dell count is 81 servers, but not all are file servers.
The file servers are mostly PowerEdge 2450, 2550, and 2650 machines.
Rest are 1650, 1750, and 1850 machines.  We use the internal
scsi Perc RAID cards with internal drives, not external.
Since we are using AFS extensively, we went with the method
of spreading our data across multiple servers to reduce the impact
of a failure of a single box.  We only use the internal drives,
fill the boxes with the largest hard drives that Dell offers at
the time, and when we need more space, we add another server.
We do not use any of their external disk devices.

-Dj

-- 
Dj Merrill
deej@thayer.dartmouth.edu

"TSA: Totally Screwing Aviation"