Xref: utzoo comp.sys.super:138 comp.sys.celerity:92 comp.unix.questions:22921
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!convex!datri
From: datri@convex.com (Anthony A. Datri)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.super,comp.sys.celerity,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Disk striping experiences (summary)
Message-ID: <103040@convex.convex.com>
Date: 14 Jun 90 00:30:33 GMT
References: <1029@orange19.qtp.ufl.edu> <1039@orange19.qtp.ufl.edu>
Sender: usenet@convex.com
Followup-To: comp.sys.super
Organization: Convex Computer Corporation; Richardson, TX
Lines: 34

>Convex owners mentioned 3-way and 6-way striping, so they obviously don't
>have any such limitation.

We've got an 11-way /tmp in house.  Gotta do *something* with those pesky
a partitions...

>One Convex owner said they had a setup with 5 disks on two controllers
...
>to be so.  They are running XY451D controllers and Fujitsu Eagle
>disks.  You definitely need to have the striped disks on different
>controllers, though.

It helps to have multiple controllers (isn't that *always* true?), but in
reality, ConvexOS can stripe together (if you reeeeealy want to)
any assortment of partitions, as long as they're on the same *kind* of
controller -- typically the old xy451, newer iphase 4200, or our own IDC.
You're warned, however, if you specify two partitions on the same drive.
This must be an ooooold customer -- we haven't done Eagles in a good while,
and we sell very few of those crufty xy451's any more.

Personally, I've never really been convinced that striping is always a
performance win on a real-world machine with a large number (like 80) of
simultaneous users.  If you've got n MB/sec coming through your I/O system,
does it really matter how you slice it?




(I'm just a sysadm, not a salescreature, and I try very hard to not sound like
 the latter).
--

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vi belongs in errno.h:  editor too big