Optimal Disk Layout for IDS?
Hi Informixers, I'm planning a replacement for our old Informix server and am thinking about what to put on my wish list regarding hard disks. Server will be IDS 7.31 for the time being (at present UC4, may update to UC7). Hardware RAID is probably not possible in our budget, and I am confused anyway about how to optimally partition the disks and spread my chunks and dbspaces across them. AFAIK, I have to take these facts for granted: - There is a 2GB limit on chunk size for Informix - It is best to utilize as many "spindles" as possible. Does that mean the best solution would be to have as many 2GB disks as I can get, preferably distributed among several controllers? Since 2GB disks are hardly available any more, I'll get disks of at least 4GB, probably even 10 or more GB. Since the overall size of my databases is much less than 3GB, I can hardly justify getting more than 4 disks, even taking into account separate dbspaces for logical logs, physical log and temp dbspaces. I'll probably have two disk controllers; disk mirroring and/or striping is software-provided by the OS (Siemens Reliant UNIX). I am unsure if a combination of these two to get the much recommended RAID 10 is feasible, since it is not done in hardware. So what disk layout would the experts recommend for 4 x 4GB harddisks on two controllers? Regards, Richard -- +-----------------------------+-------------------------------------+ | Dr. med Richard Spitz | Mail: spitz@ana.med.uni-muenchen.de | | Klinik für Anaesthesiologie | Tel : +49-89-7095-6110 | | Klinikum der Univ. München | FAX : +49-89-7095-6420 | | 81366 München, Germany | GSM : +49-172-8933578 | +-----------------------------+-------------------------------------+
If you've got access to the informix techinfo center, look at: http://www.informix.com/informix/services/ilink/pubs/technote/tn00v10i2/chap 2.htm This seems spot on. Malc "Richard Spitz" <Richard.Spitz@ana.med.uni-muenchen.de> wrote in message news:3A029317.FC34D86C@ana.med.uni-muenchen.de... > Hi Informixers, > > I'm planning a replacement for our old Informix server and am thinking > about what to put on my wish list regarding hard disks. Server will > be IDS 7.31 for the time being (at present UC4, may update to UC7). > Hardware RAID is probably not possible in our budget, and I am > confused anyway about how to optimally partition the disks and spread > my chunks and dbspaces across them. > > AFAIK, I have to take these facts for granted: > - There is a 2GB limit on chunk size for Informix > - It is best to utilize as many "spindles" as possible. > > Does that mean the best solution would be to have as many 2GB disks > as I can get, preferably distributed among several controllers? > > Since 2GB disks are hardly available any more, I'll get disks of at > least 4GB, probably even 10 or more GB. Since the overall size of > my databases is much less than 3GB, I can hardly justify getting more > than 4 disks, even taking into account separate dbspaces for logical > logs, physical log and temp dbspaces. > > I'll probably have two disk controllers; disk mirroring and/or striping > is software-provided by the OS (Siemens Reliant UNIX). I am unsure if a > combination of these two to get the much recommended RAID 10 is feasible, > since it is not done in hardware. > > So what disk layout would the experts recommend for 4 x 4GB harddisks > on two controllers? > > Regards, Richard > -- > +-----------------------------+-------------------------------------+ > | Dr. med Richard Spitz | Mail: spitz@ana.med.uni-muenchen.de | > | Klinik f'r Anaesthesiologie | Tel : +49-89-7095-6110 | > | Klinikum der Univ. M'nchen | FAX : +49-89-7095-6420 | > | 81366 M'nchen, Germany | GSM : +49-172-8933578 | > +-----------------------------+-------------------------------------+