[aclug-L] Re: Hardware vs. software RAID, etc

[Jonathan Hall <jonhall@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Oct 29, 2001 at 10:07:45PM -0600, Ryan Hunt wrote:
> 
> I will assume, 2 drives = Raid1 and we know raid1 is mirroring
> 
> If all you want is mirroring then I wouldent bother with an IDE Raid
> Controller (YUK!) I think a software raid would be fine for this
> instance..

How difficult is it to configure Linux to boot from a software raid device? 
Or would I need to set up a smallish partition at the beginning of the drive
for booting?

What is a standard configuration when doing RAID?  Should the entire system
be run on my 80gb RAID?  Or should I put a smaller drive in the system, too,
for swap, booting, etc?


> Instead of raid you might consider the same path I use for mirroring
> harddrives.. search freshmeat for a program called "cpbk"
> Its a great little tool that compares directories and updates the mirror
> drive (via mount) with any files that have updated, added, and deleted..

That sounds pretty slow and icky.  Unless it does something to keep track of
which files are updated as they are updated, so it doesn't have to scan
through the entire filesystem.


> The best part is a feature called a trashbin, if a file was deleted off the 
> live
> drive when cpbk is ran (i run it via cronjob) istead of deleting the
> file off the mirror drive,  it copies it to a trash bin for pierodic
> manual deletion or recovery...
> 
> I dont have any expierence with software raid nor IDE raid tho.. to bad
> you cant get him to go SCSI :\
> 
> Hope this helps,
> :Ryan
> 
> On Mon, 29 Oct 2001, Jonathan Hall wrote:
> 
> >
> > I'm building a server that will be using IDE RAID (b/c I can't convince the
> > owner to use SCSI bleh...)
> >
> > I'll probably have two 7200rpm 80gb ATA100 drives.  Question is... what sort
> > of RAID configuration should I use?
> >
> > Tomshardware suggests that a Promise FastTrak100 TX2 is the fastest IDE
> > hardware RAID solution (at least of the 3 cards it reviewed).
> >
> > Is the performance and reliability gained by using hardware RAID enough to
> > do that instead of Linux's software RAID?
> >
> > Are there other options I should consider in the same price range?  Other
> > hardware RAID options?
> >
> > Thanks.
> >
> > --
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> >  Systems Admin, Future Internet Services; Goessel, KS * (620) 367-2487
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  Jonathan Hall  *  jonhall@xxxxxxxxxxxx  *  PGP public key available
 Systems Admin, Future Internet Services; Goessel, KS * (620) 367-2487
         http://www.futureks.net/  *  PGP Key ID: FE 00 FD 51
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