setting up a server.. some noobie questions..

[clever_j]

while i consider myself quite an expert in building regular PC's, i've never tried setting up an actual server before..

im about to get and setup the following:
http://www.ititem.co.th/products/HW/server/ibm-x206m.php

i pretty much know most of the way, except for the RAID setup and HotSwap stuffs..

what we wanted to achieve was to setup a server with at least 2 hard drives, where the second hard drive is an exact copy of the main harddrive (RAID 0?), and that the 2nd hard drive can be removed/inserted anytime without shutting down the server (hotswap?)..

this is how i understood this server could do. so. am i right?

also.. what's the difference between hot swap and simple swap?


Would really appreciate a quick tip or two.

thanks

 

[bobojuice]

Raid 1 is what you need for Mirrored mode.

Simple swap, i've never heard of and im thinking it might be some proprietary IBM thing. Probably the same as HotSwap. HotSwap basically just means you can plug and unplug the hard drive while the machine is running. Usually this is accomplished by using SCSI drives. I think eSata might also be HotSwappable. I used to work at a place that made Raid 1 controllers, and they had a few units that allowed you to hotswap drives, both sata and pata.

 

[clever_j]

umm.. arent regular sata drives hotswapble? i thought that was one of their best features?

 

[bobojuice]

Regular sata drives are NOT hot swappable. Serial attatched SCSI aka SAS, i believe is, as is eSata. The only reason we were able to have hotswappable drives at my last job is because we used the raid controller as an interface that supported hot swapping. If you try to swap a regular sata device, youre gonna come into some real problems with power, not to mention the operating system wont be able to pick up the data after its been added.

 

[clever_j]

i see, good brain food thanks

 

[clever_j]

anyone?