[WBEL-users] Raid
Kirby C. Bohling
kbohling@birddog.com
Mon, 18 Oct 2004 11:03:50 -0500
On Sun, Oct 17, 2004 at 05:40:20PM -0700, bishop wrote:
> Interesting too.
>
> My SWRaid drives are Samsungs, my backup drives are maxtors. They're so
> loud I usually idle them down but for the 0300 backup run.
>
> Having said that, I'm all but abandoning SWRaid and looking to get, yes,
> a 3ware IDE HWRaid card. In order to hose my SWRaid, I can:
> - set up 3x160 Raid-5 hd[c or f] hdf hdg
> - mkfs.ext3 /ded/md0
> - cp -a /home/* /mnt/new (60Gb)
>
> Guaranteed to hose it, mark it read-only, refuse unmounting and require
> an eventual reboot of the system. Me, I'm rather thinking it's a load
> issue, for the box is busied with the cp. Then again, I'm all but
> unwilling to accept the idea that a linux box can fall over so badly on
> a task I thought to be a bit more common.
For whatever it's worth, I run Software RAID on 4 different
Oracle machines. I've run it in a RAID 5 config with a 12 drive
RAID5 config for several months months. I've run it in a RAID10 on
three of the machines for the 42 months now. Most of that time it's
been on SCSI. About 18 months ago, I setup an archive machine that
has 4x300GB in a RAID5 config using Maxtor drives. In the end, I
had to send one of the drives back for an RMA after it failed for
the 4th time with a bad block. Since I've run it flawlessly using
Whitebox for the last 6 months (it was RH9 for the 12 months before
that).
In all that time, I've never lost any data (knock, knock, knock
on wood) due to a failure of software RAID. I've had one machine
hang, but I think that was due to a substandard driver for the
ServRAID cards we have.
My guess is that either you have hardware issues, or a software
configuration issue. Software RAID has run incredibly reliably for
me under all sorts of configuration issues. I've run it LVM on top
of it. I've run it as raw drives. I've run it for long periods of
time under 24x7 database load importing several GB's of data a week
for years.
About the only thing I don't do that you describe, is I never
use cp to move that kind of data. I always end up using tar or
rsync, but that's just an old habit I learned from the O'Reilly
Backup Book (tar can be used over a pipe, which means you can move
from machine A to machine B via SSH the same way you move data on a
local machine, so I don't have to worry about odd limitations of
scp). Knowing one reliable way to move data locally and remotely is
easier for me.
$ tar cf - /path/to/cp | ssh user@machine "cd /dest/path/ && tar xvpf -"
$ tar cf - /path/to/cp | ( cd /dest/path/ && tar xvpf - )
Thanks,
Kirby
>
> (yayyy)
>
> - bish
> the guy with 480Gb of
> useless drives this week
>
> William Warren wrote:
>
> >interesting..while i had issues with maxtors last year i have a maxtor
> >120 gig in my current ssytem and a maxtor 80 gig in my file server..they
> >both have run for over a year without issues..
> >
> >hawk82 wrote:
> >
> >>True. But I could never get a software raid partition to boot from a
> >>RAID1 array. It was just too much work to get the whole software raid
> >>stuff to work, that I just decided to buy a raid card and be done with
> >>it.
> >>Yeah, I probably should buy a 2nd raid card, but this is just my
> >>personal server and I doubt that a) the card will die soon and b) I
> >>will probably rebuild the entire server with new hardware in two years
> >>or c) probably won't have this server.
> >>
> >>Yes, maxtor drives are junk and I wish I had gotten Seagates at the
> >>time. But I was stuck on a weekend for replacement drives and Staples
> >>was the only store open that had drives.
> >>
> >>lessons learned.
> >>
> >>Josh
> >>
> >>
> >>On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 12:14:42 +0200, Thomas Knoop <th.knoop@b-c-s.nl>
> >>wrote:
> >>
> >>>Hi hawk82,
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>I'm currently using an older 3ware 6200 with two maxtor ide drives.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>I tried the software raid in linux, but it is just too much work. This
> >>>>solution is a lot easier. Made even easier since I put each drive in a
> >>>>removable drive bay. If one dies, power down the system, pop out the
> >>>>old drive, and put a new one, reboot and the array rebuilds.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>Okay, but what happens if your 3ware card dies in, let's say 2 years,
> >>>how
> >>>fast would you have your system up and running?
> >>>
> >>>Thats why you should consider Software Raid, because even if everything
> >>>dies, except for 1 disk, you would be able to have a system running,
> >>>on that
> >>>disk, very fast.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>_______________________________________________
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> >>>http://beau.org/mailman/listinfo/whitebox-users
> >>>
> >>
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> >>
> >
>
> --
> "What do you call the smaller ones;
> Cabinet-Maker Ants?" -- Kevin
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