[ale] raid suggestions

Geoffrey Myers lists at serioustechnology.com
Mon Feb 13 09:46:21 EST 2012


Jeff Hubbs wrote:
> So tell us about the Linux box, which I assume has been and will 
> continue to be a fileserver.  Number/size of drives; disk controller 
> complement.

Not to be.  It's being replaced with the new (windows) hardware.

> 
> On 2/10/12 2:55 PM, Geoffrey Myers wrote:
>> Jeff Hubbs wrote:
>>> So we've all gone down all these different roads and we still don't have
>>> the hardware/usage story from the OP?
>> Well, now it's changed substantially. :(  Initially, was planning on
>> replacing existing file server with better hardware.  Now they tell me
>> they are purchasing an application, which of course, only runs on
>> windows, thus they need the new server to run windows.  Just the same,
>> the client has about 15 desktop machines that connect to an (existing)
>> Linux box for sharing documents.
>>
>>> On 2/10/12 1:01 PM, Pat Regan wrote:
>>>> On Fri, 10 Feb 2012 04:44:38 -0500
>>>> Jim Lynch<ale_nospam at fayettedigital.com>   wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Has the concern about the possibility of the hardware controller
>>>>> breaking and being out of production been eliminated?
>>>> Whether the card is out of production or not may not matter much in the
>>>> middle of the day when the controller decides to fail.  You'll still
>>>> either have to own a spare or you'll have to be able to actually
>>>> purchase one nearby.  Depending on your scale, buying that spare may be
>>>> a sizable amount of your server budget.
>>>>
>>>> Almost all the arguments I've seen in favor of using hardware instead of
>>>> software RAID are either completely untrue or were a true for a short
>>>> window around 10 years ago.
>>>>
>>>>> That of course can be alleviated by proper backups.  I always thought
>>>>> that was somewhat meaningless in a lot of cases 'cause I'd think many
>>>>> raid installations were to support a backup set of drives.  Not all,
>>>>> of course, but surely that's a common purpose for a raid set.
>>>> RAID is not a replacement for backups.  Your RAID only helps protect
>>>> you from disk failures and reduce the risk of downtime.  It won't
>>>> protect you from many kinds of data corruption or from user error.
>>>>
>>>> Pat
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-- 
Until later, Geoffrey

"I predict future happiness for America if they can prevent
the government from wasting the labors of the people under
the pretense of taking care of them."
- Thomas Jefferson


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