Power supply

[Hermann]

Need some help on a server power supply. Dual Athlom MP system with a Tyan Tiger MB. Have 3 hard drive systems in the case: #1 is 2 18gb mirror set (all are seagate cheetas) #2 is 4 36gb raid 5, #3 is 3 36gb raid 5. The mirror is on an adaptec 29160 card, which also has the tape drives (dds-3 interneal and Ultrium external) and cd-rom. The 2 arrays are on an adaptec 3200 raid controler. Have a basic G-force video card.

Having troubles with drives dropping off the arrays. Until last week it was always the first drive and aften happened in both arrays relatively close together. 1/2 the a rebuild worked, the others had to rma and replace the drive. Last week we replaced the raid controler. Friday we started losing drives and ended up losing 3 drives.

Our best guess is that we are having power issues (not enough to go around.) We have an Enlight 550 psu and an APC ups 750. Is there a better arangment or different psu we should use? Other thoughts on the cause of the trouble?

Win2000 server
CA Inoculate / eSCM
Diskkeeper and Undelete
Arcserve
2gb ram on the server, 96 on the raid controller (I think)

Thanks for the help!

 

[amdskip]

Definately change out power supplies on that. I would run a high end antec or enermax power supply instead. Sorry I don't have any more insight on the problem but good choice on having a battery backup!

 

[Hermann]

typo - sorry - antec true550 PSU

 

[amdskip]

Still I am not sure if you may be overloading that power supply. What about multiple power supplies?

 

[Hermann]

calcs come real close (had a couple of smarter people do them for me). Looks like I am on the edge. Haven't found a single PSU more than a 660 from enermax and it isn't a true 660, actually 480 and 220 or something like that. Can you run multiple psu's? need options

-Thanks

 

[networkman]

Is there any reason you can't just grab a high capacity AT-type power supply, wire it up to provide power for one of the sets of drives like the Raid array, and turn it on prior to boot your main system? That way you get some of the load off of your main supply and not spend a fortune on ever larger power supplies.

I've done this in the past and not had any problems. It's akin to having an external box hooked up with it's own power source, like a CDRom tower for instance. It's what I'd do if I were in your position.

 

[Hermann]

Want to make sure what ever solution I implement is sound. Have 32 people working on the system (file serve) who bill at an average of $80 an hour.

 

[GregANDTCH]

Why don't you look here:
http://www.pcpowerandcooling.com/products/power_supplies/highperformance_d/index.htm
YMMV

http://www.pcpowerandcooling.com/products/power_supplies/dual_cpu_selector/index.htm
Which Tyan board is it?

 

[mastertech01]

Personally I think you are asking way too much of any one PSU. You should invest in a nice external Raid tower with its own dual redundant PSUs for at least some of the drives. Not only is it too much drain on a system that already requires lots of power just to run the board with processors and ram and controllers, but the heat factor has to be tremendous.


One example of this is the Nstor GigaRaid tower I have. It has dual redundant 300 watt PSUs and 8 hotswap drive trays, split plane for running 4 drives on each channel. Something similar should be considered for such a large database setup as yours. IMHO.