[KLUG Members] Few RAID questions for all of you to noodle over.

[Adam Bultman]

Okay.  I've got a Windows 2000 Advanced Server right now. It's on a K6-2
400 MHz and has 512 MB of RAM. (it used to have 128 until I started here,
and upgraded it).  It's got a 66 GB RAID, made up of 9 GB drives.  You do
the math to find out how many drives there are.

Firstly:  I need to add onto this.  The server currently has TWO RAID
cards in it (yeah, a waste, I know):  An adaptec 2100S (sweet card) and a
DPT decade POS.  The server recently lost a drive, and I'm working on
that. However, to avoid further rapings with lisencing, I want to make it
linux.  Red Hat linux, or Debian.  I lean towards red hat because it's got
TONS of stuff that will make administration easy. Yay!.  Does redhat
support multiple RAID cards well? I've had the adaptec on my system
before, if I'm not mistaken, but both might be a problem.  I have an
adaptec 2940 Lying around that I might put the tape drive on (which is
what the second card is for).  I'll need printing support, FTP, and
standard stuff like that.  All the rest is cake, EXCEPT for printing,
which I've failed miserably at every single time.  Is there a simple way
to do this?  Most of my experience lies with trying to set up printing via
the network.

Secondly:  I need to add to my RAID.  I'm expecting to have to double it's
size.  I'd rather not buy more 9 GB drives, since that won't be very
space-efficient.  I'm already going to have to buy another storage box,
which I believe I have.  What I need to do is integrate other drives into
this fray.  I was thinking making it like this, so make it appear that
they are on the same drive:

/RAID/oldraid
/RAID/newraid

Where oldraid has some of the old files on it, and newraid has some of the
old files on it, too.  I don't know if I can take two RAIDS and put them
together, which is the other idea.  I'd rather not stripe them, or put
them together using software, I would like to make it congrous somehow.
Any ideas?

Adam

-- 
Adam Bultman
adam@glaven.org
[ http://www.glaven.org ]