Computer Hardware

Vantec Hot Swap Hard Drive Trays Review

Feb 5, 2010 by Paul White

Recently I decided to add some hot swap trays to my system.  I searched for quite a while before I found trays that would maintain my personal sense of style ( Bling ), and have functionality as well.  I went with the Vantec Trays that include a blue LCD display giving you temperature stats on the drives.  Overall I am very happy with my decision, though Vantec could have done a slightly better job with these.

Adaptec 4805 SAS RAID benchmark on Windows 7 review

Feb 5, 2010 by Paul White

I knew I was going to make the switch to Windows 7, but I wanted to make a few upgrades before I did this.  These upgrades included hot swap trays for my SATA drives, and extending my SAS RAID array from 2 drives to 4 drives.  However this forced me to get a Dedicated RAID controller, as the ASUS board only supports two SAS drives.  On this blog I will focus on the SAS RAID upgrade using the Adaptec 4805SAS RAID card and 4 x 15K RPM Fujitsu SAS Hard Drives.

Godaddy Dedicated Server Performance VS Colocated Server Performance

Nov 15, 2009 by Paul White

If you are thinking about getting a dedicated server with Godaddy because of their cheap prices, I understand. But how far will their server really take you?  After dealing with performance issues with godaddy with another client, I build my own server and colocated it.  Then I did some benchmarks comparing the two.  Huge difference. Click read to see the bench marks.

Hacking more storage into your rack server

Oct 17, 2009 by Paul White

Even though I will be running remote backups, I wanted to make sure I had a little more redundancy than just RAID 10 and remote backups.  So I took it upon myself to figure out how to cram an extra hard drive into an already crowded Server.  This 1U rack server already has 4 x 3.5" hard drives. Now lets see if we can cram a small laptop hard drive into this for a in the box backup storage medium.

Rocketraid 4310 Benchmarks RAID 10

Oct 16, 2009 by Paul White

I finally got my server setup properly and running the way 4 15K SAS drives should in RAID 10.  Thus far I am very happy with the HighPoint RocketRaid 4310.  The benchmarks tell all

RocketRAID 4310 PCI e x8 problems with SuperMirco Server

Oct 14, 2009 by Paul White

I got my RocketRAid 4310 PCI-e x8 Card today.   This was supposed to give me some excellent speed on my 4 15K SAS drives, allowing me to get this system quickly setup and colocated.  Instead the server doesn't seem to like the card.  Read more for the lastest on my Server Build.

How much traffic can a 1u rack Server handle

Oct 8, 2009 by Paul White

Being that I am on the verge of colocating my own box.  This is one of the many questions I have asked myself.  So a little math to determine the theoretical maximums, and some thoughts on how you can built a server that can support them.

SuperMico SuperServer giving slow RAID 10 performance

Oct 4, 2009 by Paul White

When you go out of your way to build an awesome server,  you demand performance.  4 SAS drives should perform better than a single SATA drive right?  I thought so too.  Not sure if I have something configured wrong, but I have gotten desperate enough to contact SuperMicro about this.  Hopefully they will get back with me soon, as I was hoping to colocate this box by Nov, 1st 2009

73 GB 10K SAS Drive RAID 10 Benchmark SuperMicro Server

Sep 25, 2009 by Paul White

If you are anything like me, that means you try to find used goods on ebay rather than buying new hardware from Dell or HP.  So I think I scored pretty nicely with my $425 SuperMicro Server.  That was until I ran a bench mark on it. 

Core i7 WorkStation revised

Sep 20, 2009 by Paul White

A few of my friends wanted me to blog a little more about my computer setup.  With the recent addition of a 30 inch Samsung SyncMaster 305T monitor to my displays, I thought this would be a good time to update the world on what I am running.