Michael Dale

So we've got two computers in the house using Intel Matrix raid.

First our server is using it for our Raid 1 boot drive, and my old desktop (just upgraded to an i7 iMac) was using it for its Raid 5 boot drive.

From what I've found, if WIndows crashes or isn't shutdown correctly the Raid will require rebuilding, both these systems do it. While it is rebuilding the performance is awful. It also takes up to 24hrs on our server to rebuild the array.

The other thing I have found is that the write performance on the Raid 5 drives is really really slow. My desktop was running it, bad idea I should have just stuck to a single drive, there was no real reason for using Raid.

Both systems aren't bad/slow (Q6600s with 8 and 4gb ram). We've also got a Raid 5 in the server running off a RaidCore PCI-X card and it is great. Never needs to rebuild and it is quick. 

So yeah not surprising that the RaidCore actually works well but I didn't think Intel Matrix raid would be so bad...

Got myself a new dev box today:

AMD Phenom x3 8450 (3x2.1GHz)
2gb Ram 6gb Ram

Currently running Windows 2008 (for some Hyper-V testing). Seems to run pretty quick, just needs more ram ;)

We're just in the process of replacing our server. Specs:

• Windows 2008 64bit (with Hyper-V for Web and VoIP)
• Intel Q6600 (Quad 2.4GHz)
• 4gb Ram (soon to be upgraded to 8gb)
• 2x300gb Raid 1 Boot drive
• 4x750gb Raid 5 Data drive

So email is currently down but will be back up tonight.

I purchased a new desktop computer the other day (first one since 2003). Unfortunately the video card has not come yet, so my vista "experience" score is interesting :)

The computer is an Intel 2.4GHz Quad Core with 4gb Ram and a 8800GTS (currently an X300se, heh).

Finally got a new server running. So I'm in the process of moving the websites over it to.

It should be faster too (it is an Athlon 64 3000+).

The Web Server is having issues *again*.

This time it looks like one of the CPUs isn't working. So it's going to be running with a single cpu until I get around to fixing it :|

EDIT: Still having issues. Might be a power supply issue, but we don't have another one to test with.

Sorry about the downtime. There are some issues with Apache that are causing the server to lockup; I haven't had time to look into it yet.

The reason I didn't get to it quicker was that I had been at Heron Island for the week (which was awesome).

Our web server died a few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to borrow a spare DL380 G1 from work. Although we still have it, I'm not sure if we'll be able to keep it.

So this new server is a DL360 G1 (1 rack unit):

• Dual Pentium 3 1.266GHz (512K L2 Cache)
• 256mb Ram (we will upgrade it if it goes into production)
• 18gb SCSI HDD
• 2 100mbit onboard nics

Here is what it looks like:

We've finally got all the hardware ready and setup for the new server:

• Dual Althon MP 1800+
• 2gb ECC DDR Ram
• 3x80gb SATA in Raid 5 for boot, off a HighPoint 1640
• 3x300gb SATA in Raid 5 for data, off a RaidCore 4852

So yeah. Our new file/mail/sharepoint server!