[Discuss] raid issues

[John Abreau]

If you're doing hardware raid, and the raid controller dies, you need to
replace it with the same make and model raid card, and if it's in a server
that's been in production for years, there's a risk that the manufacturer
might no longer be making that specific make and model any more. So you
need to keep an ample supply of spares in stock.

If you're doing software raid, and treating the controller cards as just a
bunch of standard SATA or SAS ports, then a failed controller can be
replaced with any controller with at least as many SATA or SAS ports.

Personally, I prefer sticking with raid-1. I've heard too many horror
stories of raid-5 failures.


On Thu, Jun 19, 2014 at 8:50 PM, Stephen Adler <adler at stephenadler.com>
wrote:

> Guys,
>
> I'm in the process of ordering a new server for my work and I want to get
> one which can handle 16 to 24 drives. But with so much disk capacity I was
> wondering what people to do make the file systems secure. In the past I've
> used either raid 5 or raid 6 arrays. The idea being that if 1 (raid 5) or 2
> (raid 6) drives died, you were OK, all you had to do was replace the drives
> and the rebuild would occur and you were fine.
>
> But then one day I had 4 drives fail at once. It wasn't the drives that
> failed, but the disk controller. I had added a 4 port SATA card to my
> server so that I could add for more drives to my server. So now with
> getting a server with such large drive capacity, I'm wondering of all this
> raid stuff just gives on the warm fuzzies, but in fact you are just as
> vulnerable since you controllers can go and knock out half your drives (or
> whatever).
>
> Any comments on how to deal with say a 16 disks and what's the current
> lore on making large redundant disk arrays?
>
> Thanks in advance!
>
> Cheers. Steve.
>
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John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix
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