RAID 10 performance tradeoffs and firebird

I have been configuring a fair number of Linux database servers for a line-of-business application; it runs the Firebird SQL database in server mode only (no application code at all – just DB).

All of these are the wonderful Dell PowerEdge 2950 units with the PERC6i RAID controller, and my typical configuration is 6x 146G 15k SAS drives. These are the highest-performance, highest capacity solution in 3.5″ drives.