BIG BIG Storage idea?

[augustine]

A board has 5 PCI slots right?
Means we can hook up 5 PCI IDE cards making a connection of 20 and plus the 2 on the main board that makes 22.

Could we just do a RAID1 for each pair getting us 11 workable drives.
Then use 1 pair as the / directory for the main OS stuff then RAID0 for the rest of the 10 pairs.

Then we will have 2TB of usable data!!
Is that safe?

[cornelis]

That will solve some issues about HDD crashing... but what about the PCI card? What about the CPU?
You have to consider those too.

[cristobal]

Just before you actually go do ot... What are you thinking of doing with 2TB of storage space online?
If you have a commercial storage solution please let me know and I will keep far far away....

[allon]

Now what if that PCI card breaks? You got a backup for that?
What about the mainboard?
I think it would be better to spend money making a load balanced cluster rather than a all in one powerhouse that could just break and fail....

[utxi]

Get an Apple Xserve. That will do all you need

[cristobal]

Apple Xserve? I never tried or use a Mac server before.
How is it like?

[allon]

It is just like any other server. Just that its produced by Apple.
But of course the core is still a UNIX Which makes it much more stable than Windows as a server.

[augustine]

Mac servers run on Unix? I never knew....
Anyone used them before and can share some first hand experiences?