On  2 Jun 98 at 12:59, JEFFREY wrote:

>   I am running NT 4.0 on a 150 MHz Pentium Pro Server with 128 MB
> RAM, 1 x 2.1 GB Seagate Fireball ATA Harddisk (Boot Disk), 1 x 6.1 GB
> Seagate Fireball ATA Harddisk (Exchange Server 5.0 and User Mailbox). We
> have 120 users accessing this server. The server currently having
> performance problem and my supplier suggested to upgrade to SCSI
> Harddisk. Their recommendation  - Adaptec Ultra Wide PCI SCSI Host
> Adapter (AHA-2940UW) with 1 x 9.1 GB Seagate Ultra Wide Harddisk
> (ST391073W).
>
>   Is this a good combination ?

  Raw drive throughput is unlikely to improve much with this
configuration.  What *will* improve immediately is CPU utilization,
which might or might not be part of the problem, depending on your
server's application mix.  You could check this out with Performance
Monitor, which is either part of NT or the resource kit.
  Depending on how you transfer existing data to the new drive, you
could see a defrag-like effect which will also help.  Your defrag
choices are limited with NTFS, but it's something you should probably
be doing regularly.

  You're likely to get better SCSI performance with multiple drives
rather than a single large drive.  If you can afford to put the swap
file on its own drive, that will help -- even more if it's on its own
controller.  For the rest of your files, you want to spread accesses
across several drives, and you can do that automatically with a RAID
array.
  NT can do RAID 0 and RAID 1 in software.  For performance, you want
RAID 1, but the disadvantage is that if any drive dies, *all* of your
files are lost.  To cover that, you need to go either to RAID 5 or
RAID 0+1, and I don't think NT will do either on its own.  RAID
hardware controllers typically run in the $1-2K range; if you're
interested in those, skip the 2940UW...

  My recommendation:

1.  Keep the 2.1GB drive as the boot drive.  You can't boot from a
RAID array if NT is doing it in software.  I'd try putting the swap
file on this drive, too.

2.  Add the AHA-2940UW.

3.  Instead of the ST39173-W (note corrected model #), about $650,
install 2 or 3 IBM DCAS34330 4.3GB drives, $280 each, and configure
them in NT as a RAID 1 array ("stripe set"), which means that they'll
look to applications and users like a single 8.6 GB or 12.9 GB drive,
with roughly 2 or 3 times the bandwidth to disk of a single drive
(subject to the UW-SCSI maximum of 40MB/s).


  This isn't the ultimate storage solution, but if money were no
object, you'd probably be looking to go from a P150 to something like
a dual PII-400 with 256MB of RAM or more.  I'm not sure that your
P150 can actually derive much useful benefit from a more upscale
approach than I've outlined here.

David G