multiple cache_dirs or one RAID set?

 Hi,

 Does anyone have real life experience with both RAID sets and multiple
 drives configurations for cache_dirs? I'm going to setup our cache on
 a RAID-able box with 6x 4GB drives and I'm wondering what is "better",
 either use a single huge logical drive and let RAID distribute load or
 use multiple logical drives and let squid/os distribute load.

 I'm considering these scenarios:

 1) OS on separate disk, no FT, cache on 5 separate disks, no FT,
    use RAID controller only as accelerator (it has 16MB R/W cache)
 2) OS on separate disk, no FT, cache on 5 disks in RAID0 (stripeset)
 3) OS on logical drive, cache on 1 logical drive, both distributed on
    6 disks in RAID-5.
 4) OS on logical drive, cache on x logical drives, all on 6-drive RAID-5

 Box is dedicated for caching, no other service is run there. As such,
 Fault Tolerance (FT) is not the highest priority, but then again, having
 hot-swap drives and hardware wide-ultra RAID accelerator, I don't want
 to feel real stupid in case a single drive fails in 1,2. Can't decide
 if to go 3 or 4 although I have a feeling that RAID would distribute
 load better than OS/squid.

 any hints/gotchas/suggestions?

 please CC me - i'm not on the list.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  Andres Kroonmaa mail: andre@online.ee
  Network Manager
  Organization: MicroLink Online Tel: 6308 909
  Tallinn, Sakala 19 Pho: +372 6308 909
  Estonia, EE0001 http://www.online.ee Fax: +372 6308 901
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Received on Mon Nov 17 1997 - 06:31:50 MST