Current setup:
I've got 6 SN25P shuttles running AMD 4000+ processors with 2gb of ram. Each of them had 2x250gb SATA2 software RAID1 setup. These machines are powering a Tile Display Wall (4x3 21.3" samsung 1600x1200 screens) that has its own shelving below for the Shuttles. We had lots of problems with the software mirrors breaking and having to rebuild them - machines would crash because of software glitches etc... when the mirror was rebuilding the ~200gb partition the machine would basically slow down the whole cluster when doing real-time rendering. So we decided that instead of hosting the OS on each individual node, we are going to have all of them network boot off of a master node. We also decided that a hardware RAID5 setup on the master node would work best for our solution. We purchased an Enhance Tech X5 SCSI-SATA storage system with high hopes!
The problem is that we are limited to the space of the rack below the tile display wall which was only designed for the original 6 SN25Ps. We could get away with another SFF and the X5 enclosure - but almost all SFF systems are limited to PCI as far as expandability! We have purchased a SN95G5 V3 system and an Adaptec 29160 PCI controller card - but I think we are going to be severely limited by the PCI bus in this situation! I can't seem to find any SFF or mATX boards with 64bit PCI or SCSI 320 PCI-express controller cards!
Any suggestions? Our restrictions are that we want to use the existing 250mb SATA drives as well as being able to fit in in the shelving under the display wall. We already have an AMD X2 4200+ purchased for the master node, and we would like to stick with that as well if at all possible.
I'm open to any and all ideas!
I've got 6 SN25P shuttles running AMD 4000+ processors with 2gb of ram. Each of them had 2x250gb SATA2 software RAID1 setup. These machines are powering a Tile Display Wall (4x3 21.3" samsung 1600x1200 screens) that has its own shelving below for the Shuttles. We had lots of problems with the software mirrors breaking and having to rebuild them - machines would crash because of software glitches etc... when the mirror was rebuilding the ~200gb partition the machine would basically slow down the whole cluster when doing real-time rendering. So we decided that instead of hosting the OS on each individual node, we are going to have all of them network boot off of a master node. We also decided that a hardware RAID5 setup on the master node would work best for our solution. We purchased an Enhance Tech X5 SCSI-SATA storage system with high hopes!
The problem is that we are limited to the space of the rack below the tile display wall which was only designed for the original 6 SN25Ps. We could get away with another SFF and the X5 enclosure - but almost all SFF systems are limited to PCI as far as expandability! We have purchased a SN95G5 V3 system and an Adaptec 29160 PCI controller card - but I think we are going to be severely limited by the PCI bus in this situation! I can't seem to find any SFF or mATX boards with 64bit PCI or SCSI 320 PCI-express controller cards!
Any suggestions? Our restrictions are that we want to use the existing 250mb SATA drives as well as being able to fit in in the shelving under the display wall. We already have an AMD X2 4200+ purchased for the master node, and we would like to stick with that as well if at all possible.
I'm open to any and all ideas!