[NTLUG:Discuss] Dell Server with PERC RAID

[Stuart Johnston]

I posted a question a while back asking for recommendations on 
inexpensive servers for Linux.  The most popular suggestion seemed to be 
Dell.  I'm trying to overcome my reluctance to use Dell due to past 
negative experience with their desktops (-understatement-) and we now 
have two refurb Dell PowerEdge 2450s - Dual P3 700, PERC3/Si - RAID U160 
SCSI, 2GB RAM.

So far, it seems pretty good.  It sometimes seems a little slower than I 
had expected though, particularly the disk access.  It has 4 SCSI disks 
running RAID 5.  At times, it seems slower than our development machine 
which has a single IDE drive.  This is basically my first experience 
setting up a RAID system so I may be missing something simple.

Does anyone have experience with Dell PERC controllers that could give 
me some advice?

Thanks,
Stuart Johnston