RE: Help me Justify iSeries -- MIDRANGE-L


WELLLLLLL......    For what it's worth, I'm running several 2003 and linux
servers, mirrored, with both SATA and 7200rpm IDE's in a 24x7
arena...maybe I'm the anomoly to the rule (knock on wood, and I guess I'm
now cursed to a HDA failure this weekend), but I've not had any issues.
ALot of the intel issues I've found historically are power related, so
keeping everything on a good UPS has helped keep problems at a distance...

I would recommend staying away from the regular IDE's and go with the
SATA's for anything new and will be upgrading the remaining ones to SATA
this summer....  and these are  120-250gig boxes...

My problems been in Windows and NIC cards not being able to handle long
term sustained high data volume...these are 1gig nets and if I send 60-120
accross the net, sometimes I get a NIC that will choke...but only at very
long high sustained flow rates...

Don in DC

------------------------------

On Fri, 27 May 2005, Jones, John (US) wrote:

> Nevertheless, the drives should be considered as being engineered for
> less than 24x7 duty.  In a business computing environment, this should
> be considered an additional risk that can be mitigated by buying
> 'enterprise-class' storage; i.e. pretty much anything SCSI or a NAS/SAN.
> Some businesses may accept the risk; that's fine as long as the risk is
> understood.
>
>
> I originally mentioned the 100K documents/year.  The average size is
> supposedly going to be 100-150K so we're talking 10-15GB/year (+ file
> system overhead).  Retention rquirements haven't been ironed out yet but
> I imagine we'll only keep at most 3 years of images live and archive
> anything older.  So a single 35GB drive will likely suffice.  The
> incremental cost to grow a RAID set by 1 drive is not bad.  Compare that
> to a single-CPU (Celeron, no less) 1-U minimal Dell PowerEdge 750 (the
> cheapest rackmount server they have) and you'll see the costs are not
> far apart.  The additional drive for the iSeries is actually cheaper
> when you factor in an OS for the server (if non-Linux), HW maintenance,
> etc.  And that's raw hardware alone.
>
> For administration of the file server, there are a lot of components.
> We probably have to provide one for DR (double the hardware costs), it
> has to be backed up, it will have to be kept current on patches
> (probably), AV (definitely), etc.  Software licenses have to be procured
> and kept up to date.  You need a backup device, plan, media, software,
> etc.  There's the administrative overhead of tracking everything.  You
> have to provide rack, power/UPS, cooling, etc. for it.  For normal
> operation, there's not much in the way of troubleshooting performance
> issues, but there are plenty of tasks that have to be done, both
> one-time and ongoing.
>
> All of these things are already being done on the iSeries.  Add the
> disk, update your backup plan, and run with it.  Much easier & cheaper
> to set up and to administer.
>
> --
> John A. Jones, CISSP
> Americas Information Security Officer
> Jones Lang LaSalle, Inc.
> V: +1-630-455-2787  F: +1-312-601-1782
> john.jones@xxxxxxxxxx
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Joe Pluta
> Sent: Friday, May 27, 2005 10:04 AM
> To: 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'
> Subject: RE: Help me Justify iSeries
>
> > From: Jones, John (US)
> >
> > If you read the warranty on most desktop-class drives, they will state
>
> > something like 300 or so power-on hours per month.  They are not
> > warranted for 24x7 operation.
>
> This is not true for all drive manufacturers.  IBM's response to the POH
> number on one of its drives (now a Hitachi drive):
>
> "The 333 power-on hours (POH) defined in the 120GXP data sheet is not a
> new spec for our GXP drives; it is consistent with what we've held our
> desktop drives to in previous generation drives. The 333 power-on spec
> is not an indication of a maximum number of power-on hours or limitation
> of the Deskstar 120GXP.
>
> Our specifications indicate that the 333 power-on hours per month
> represent typical desktop PC usage. This assumes an 11-hour day based on
> a 30 day month. Users can and have successfully run the drive more than
> 11 hours a day and 333 hours per month; the drives have been used
> successfully in 24x7 environments.
>
> IBM stands by the 3-year warranty for the 120GXP. Power-on hours will
> not be a determining factor in negating the warranty."
>
>
> > Anyway, on a modern iSeries, finding a few extra GB for document
> storage
> > probably shouldn't be too much of an issue.  Also, your separate
> system
> > adds complexity to the environment, which by nature adds to the
> > administrative costs/overhead.
>
> We weren't talking about a few GB.  I'm talking specifically about when
> you have to add DASD to support binary data.  Some of the posters were
> talking about hundreds of thousands of documents, which can easily be
> hundreds of gigabytes.
>
>
> > Now, if you were already going to do Linux/Windows for, say, the web
> > serving, then by all means add the disk to that existing server and go
>
> > for it.  But as a separate, standalone box I wouldn't want the added
> > admin that entails.
>
> That's one of the things you add in to your business decision.  I'm not
> sure how much admin you think you need on a file server; typically it's
> the least time consuming job in a network.  But by all means, make sure
> you include that time in your decision making process.
>
> Joe
>
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