Re: hard- or software-raid?
On Fri, 24 Jan 2003 10:26, Tinus Nijmeijers wrote:
> My question kind'a stands: If the only thing I ask of it is for the data
> to be safe (no speed or "no downtime!" issues) is there any reason to
> use hardware over software raid?
No.
> I do not care if I have to take the server down for an hour (or 2, or 3)
> to replace a disk, be it a raid disk or boot disk. I have plenty of
> time, I could even run down to the store, get a new bootdisk, install
> debian and be up and running in 2 hours. no problem.
>
> ONLY thing that is important is that the data needs to be safe. if 2 of
> the raid-disks fail I need the data to be safe.
Then put three disks in a RAID-1 so that if two disks die at the same time you
still won't lose any data. With flakey drives such as the Hungarian
Death-Star's from IBM you can lose two drives in such a short time period
that you can't replace one before the other dies.
Scenario 0: Boot of a software RAID-1 of two 200G IDE disks, tape backup
Costs the same as scenario 1 but performs better and is easier to manage.
> Is hardware raid "safer"?
>
> (I do not think it is, I'm just waiting for someone to tell me I'm being
> naive here)
No. In fact it's less safe because you don't have such direct control over
what it's doing. You have to go through a hardware-RAID BIOS menu or
something to set it up and the disk formats are not documented anywhere.
With software RAID-1 you can mount any disk independantly of the RAID which
can really help you on occasion.
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