[geeks] OT: Pointers for buying System Components (high-end PC server)

[Phil Stracchino]

Lionel Peterson wrote:
> Background: Building about 50 DVR boxes each with 4 four-port PCI capture cards, and video storage in RAID config. The hard part seems to be that wee need 4x PCI slots for the capture cards, 2x PCI slots for the SATA RAID cards, and maybe an AGP graphics card slot, all on the same MB. (If the MB has a good on-board video system the AGP card slot could be omitted)

Would using a motherboard with onboard SATA RAID controllers help the
problem?  The GigaByte K8N motherboard that I built vorlon on had
4xPATA, 4xSATA1, 4xSATA2 onboard, and RAID on all three sets of
controllers.  (And it's PCI-Express.)

Fry's used to carry a server case very similar to what you've described;
a very large wheeled cabinet with locking side and front doors, dual
redundant power supplies, and at least 14 internal bays.  I don't know
if it was hot-swap though.  It certainly didn't look to be designed for
hot-swap; having 16 hot-swap drive bays in a PC chassis, ANY PC chassis,
is probably a bit of a tall order without going to something in the
class of the big HP netservers ... um, no more HP ... maybe Compaq
Prosignias ... um, no more Compaq ...  maybe IBM NetFinity chassis?



-- 
 Phil Stracchino       phil.stracchino at speakeasy.net
    Renaissance Man, Unix generalist, Perl hacker
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