RAID system recommendations/war stories

[Michael ODonnell]

> I've been using Winchester Systems for years with great success.
> I wouldn't call them "low-end" or "cheap" necessarilly.  These are
> hardware RAID chassis though, not RAID cards.  Probably not what
> you're looking for, but I thought since we're discussing something
> on-topic, I might as well get it into the archives for the next
> time someone asks this :)

Actually, that *is* the sort of info I'm looking for.

I guess it wasn't clear that the Promise M200p is also a
stand-alone RAID chassis that presents itself as a SCSI target.
It was chosen over plugin (or integrated) RAID controllers
because of space considerations (not enough room in the system
enclosure for all the disks we needed) and also for throughput
(our SCSI host adapter could do I/O to that RAID unit at the
required speeds while not bogging down the machine) but we
will likely revisit our approach as the requirements may get
relaxed a little, so something like a MegaRAID or 3Ware card
might be acceptable.

Thanks to all for the feedback.