I have a Windows 2000 server with dual PIII 1.13Ghz w/ 512 cache on each and 1GB RAM. I have a PERC 3 RAID controller with two 36GB SCSI drives. It handles my web serving and database access.

I am getting a Linux box (1Ghz PIII and 512MB RAM) to run the Email server and DNS processes. I am a very small company, and I need to keep costs low. To do so, I am considering going with an ATA Raid solution from IWill. I know that this in no way compares to SCSI RAID, but my question is, will it be sufficient for a hosting company that is just starting out?

Please keep in mind that right now I am very small, and the server will just be handling Email and DNS. Will the ATA RAID suffice?

Thank you.

It will be fine. ;-)

I would recommend you mirror the drives instead of striping.

:-)


-davidu

Finding drivers for setting the ide raid is not easy, i have an Iwill ka266 raid, i can only find raid driver for redhat, it is actually an MI raid raid chipset, look here and slect megaraid.

http://megaraid.lsilogic.com/support/dlresult.cfm

I also have a hotrod pro raid add on card, use highpoint raid chip set and again linux driver are not easy to come by.


I would prefer to use mandrake for desktop and suse for server, so just having redhat drivers is not helpfull.

Some suggestions, in no specific order:
1. Use djbdns and qmail for DNS and mail respectively. DJB's tools are the inarguable leaders when it comes to security, and also scale smoothly up to very high loads.
2. Don't bother with an IDE RAID card. If you want to run IDE RAID on two drives do it entirely in software -- hardware RAID cards are only better for icky stuff like RAID 5. (Under FreeBSD, use vinum.)
3. FreeBSD. Linux has a tendancy to lose email after a system crash; FreeBSD has more careful filesystem semantics which (together with a carefully designed MTA like qmail) make it impossible for mail to get lost.
4. That hardware is overkill. A Pentium 90 could handle your DNS and email quite happily. A GHz processor with 512MB RAM could probably replace one of the root nameservers.