[olug] built in RAID vs Indi RAID controlers

[Phil Brutsche]

Charles Bird wrote:

> My next thing will be the case...4 or 5u rackmount of course.
> Thinking about finding a cheapie and stripping it down to bare metal
> and doing some chrome plating. dunno yet  I'll make a seprate post as
> the time gets closer.

Be warned: rackmount chassis are a pain in the butt to deal with if you
are building one yourself.  You need to pay *particular* attention to
the power supply (if you want to convert it to dual power later, or you
get the wrong one for your motherboard, or it goes out and you need to
peplace it) and hard drive cooling mechanisms.  SCSI drives - even 10k
RPM drives - *need* to have airflow moving over them, or they will kill
themselves from the heat.

When dealing with rackmount systems I prefer to get a brand-name system
- Dell, IBM, HP (not necessarily in that order) - they worry about all
those details for you.  One caveat would be... if you don't want P4 or
Xeon your choices suddenly become very limited.

For those that like to build their own servers, SuperMicro does make
good server-oriented stuff.  Of particular interest are the SC742 and
SC743 4U rackmount chassis*...

*rackmount kit optional

-- 

Phil Brutsche
phil at brutsche.us