Re: NT Server

Brian Lube ( brian@mpinet.net )
Thu, 28 May 1998 10:22:54 -0400

At 02:22 AM 5/28/98 -0700, Dale E. Reed Jr. wrote:
>I don't completely agree with the SCSI/IDE part. It really depends on what
>you are using the server for. For a high-end SQL Server with millions of
>transactions a day, you better have a pretty extensive RAID setup. But
>is that applicable to a low-traffic web server? I don't think so.
>

I partially disagree. For the most part an IDE hard drive isn't *bad*, but
NT swaps to the hard drive for a lot of it's servicing needs (even with
256M). The question is going to be what kind of pages is the site going to
drive? If you are talking about using ASP (which is a good use for IIS)
with read/writes to a Access database, then I would say that SCSI is the
best way to go. I would also suggest that you use at least two partitions
for your NT system, if not two drives (if you are using IDE, use two
drives). What we generally use is a 1G system 'volume' and then whatever
the data volume needs to be. Our web server has 12G on it for data, and is
a complete SCSI raid system (of course, being an ISP web hosting is very
important to us).

Definitely use two drive if you are going to go IDE though, a good 1.2 or
2G system drive and then use a 4.3 or whatever for the data drive. I would
also suggest putting the swap space on the data drive. Keeping the system
volume having the least amount of traffic is the best way to keep the
system running fast. Also, look into a completely PCI solution as well.
Even an ISA video card can slow the system down.

Just my $.02

Brian Lube
senior technician
MPInet

http://www.mpinet.net