Ok, I just got a new server, and it has 2 36gb 10k rpm SCSI drives. This is going to be a webserver hosting sites for clients of mine.

Should I Stripe the drives for speed? Or should I mirror them for redundancy, or should I leave them as individual drives?

I will be using Debian 3.0r1 as the OS. If I should put it in a stripeset, or Mirror Raid, can I do it in linux? (softraid) or would I have to have a separate drive to hold the base system?

~Amish

The rest of the system specs are Dual P3 550, 1gb Ram... Its just going to be a webserver...

Ok, forget the first part, Talking with a friend who is a sysadmin, he says to Mirror the drives... Now the question is can that be done with a linux softraid? or do I need a Raid Card/ or separate drive for the linux install...

I am not sure about Debian, but Red Hat and Mandrake will allow you to set up striping and mirroring when installing. But if you stripe without a parrity check you will be in trouble if one drive dies. ie you loose everything.

It would be better (faster) to purchase a raid card and then mirror the drive. This will allow a quick recover if the primary drive fails.

Or even better buy 2 (atleast 1) more drives and set them in a Raid 5 array. This will stripe the data and accross drives and one drive will check parrity. So if one drive dies it will still run.

Since this will host customers websites, I would recommend adding 2 more drives and purchasing a raid card. Then setting the dives up in a raid 5 array. This will stripe the drives and check parrity. Though not full proof, at work we lost 2 drives and had to re-install the OS. Make sure you got a good backup plan.

Also make sure you have a cooling system for the drives. SCSI drives run hot! I have a old server that has 6 4GB SCSI hard drives and I have 2 fans that vents air across them. I had a drive fail because of heat. Since I added the fans everythings has worked great.