William Wong
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ED Online ID #12386 |
April 11, 2006
System builders often have an edge when it comes to servers, especially when they can take advantage of custom cases for delivering RAID server solutions. Adaptec’s 335SAS enclosure changes the equation by providing a professional RAID system in a compact package. It fits four hard disk drives and a slimline optical drive in the space normally used by three 5.25-inch drive bays. Couple it with Adaptec’s 4805SAS PCI Express RAID adapter and you have the best RAID platform available at this point in time.
Of course, a high-performance RAID system needs a matching compute engine to get the most out of the server. This is where ASUS’s K89N-LR motherboard comes into play. It has a PCI Express slot that will handle the 4805SAS plus PCI-X and PCI slots in case you need more than just the gigabit Ethernet support built into the motherboard. The motherboard can handle an Opteron or Socket 939 Athlon 64. We made use of AMD’s FX-60 dual-core Athlon 64, making this a dual-processor system in a single socket.
The motherboard supports up to a four-drive RAID system, but it can’t hold a candle to the 4805SAS. The latter can handle up to eight drives, although we only take advantage of four at this point. It also supports more advanced RAID configurations in addition to high-performance SAS (serial attached SCSI) drives like the four 15k rpm, 73-Gbyte Seagate Cheetah 15K.4 SAS drives that will be housed in the Adaptec enclosure. SAS drives are faster and more reliable than the SATA drives typically found in low-end servers. This system may be at the low end in terms of cost, but not in terms of performance.
Another twist in our system design is the backup mechanism. It turns out that the Antec server case we used has four external drive bays, so we have one extra bay after the Adaptec enclosure has been installed. We included a single removable drive enclosure from KingWin to house one of Seagate’s NL35 near line hard disks. These are often used for primary storage that does not need the performance of the Cheetah drives. In this case, we use it as a backup medium. The 500-Gbyte NL35 drive has more than enough space for multiple backups.
Alternatively, the NL35 can be used for its designed purpose, which is to provide a tiered storage solution. Critical, frequently used data that is kept on the Cheetah drives, and data that is less frequently accessed is placed on the NL35 drive. The Antec case has internal bays that could be used for multiple NL35 drives in a RAID configuration as well.
Setting up the system is a bit more involved than a typical server, which makes this project more interesting. The rest of this article covers the components in more detail, the installation of the motherboard in the case, configuration and installation of the Adaptec enclosure, and then the NL35 drive installation. We wrap up with the final configuration including installation of Microsoft’s Windows 2003 Server software. Linux is another viable alternative supported by the hardware, although I ran out of time before being able to check out this configuration.
The Components Antec’s Titan case was a joy to work with. Its removable front bezel and snap-in mounting rails made installation of the drive enclosures a snap. The double hinge door open up to 270º, allowing the door to flip out of the way when accessing the drive bays. It is plastic so it does not provide high security, but servers should be kept in secure locations anyway. Front-panel access for USB, Firewire, and audio was handy, but we only took advantage of the USB ports.
The case has 10 drive bays. All four external 5.25-inch bays are used by the two enclosures. For this project we did not take advantage of the six internal 3.5-inch drive bays. The case has room for an extended ATX motherboard. This includes CEB specification motherboards. Our ASUS motherboard had no trouble fitting into the case. We only need to take advantage of one of the seven expansion slots, although there are a pair of PCI and a pair of PCI-X slots that can be used on the motherboard for additional peripherals.
The TruePower 2.0 550-W ATX12V v2.0 power supply was large enough to easily handle the full peripheral complement. The power supply has all the latest power connectors, including support for PCI Express and SATA hard drives. However, these were unnecessary for this project since we did not have a power-hungry PCI Express adapter. Likewise, the SAS drives were behind enclosures that use the standard four-pin drive power connectors. The case had a rear 120-mm standard fan with a TriCool 3-speed switch, and there is space for a pair of 92-mm fans in front.
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