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

[Adam Williams]

>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.

Actually we can't calculate the number of drives unless you tell us the 
RAID level.  0,1,3,5,etc....
 
>Firstly:  I need to add onto this.  The server currently has TWO RAID
>cards in it (yeah, a waste, I know):  

Not a waste at all,  multiple SCSI busses avoid contention between 
devices.

>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!.  

Yep, the latest RedHat admin tools are swwwwwweeeeeeetttttttt........

>Does redhat
>support multiple RAID cards well? 

Yep, I've got two IPS cards in my host at home.

>I've had the adaptec on my system
>before, if I'm not mistaken, but both might be a problem.

Nope.  I've got 2 IPS 3 channel raid cards, an aic7xxx PCI card, and two 
aic7xxx channels on the MB.  Oh, and a Future Domain SCI PCI card too...
  
>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.

What aspect of printing?  The RH7.2 printtool is flat out amazing.  If you 
mean Samba printing, what issue.

>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

? Are we talking under Linux or WinY2k?
 
>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?

Unless you can peer the raid cards you have to do the bonding via 
software.