Re: WinBlow$ Home Server equivalent
On Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 11:28:35AM +0100, Alan Chandler (alan@chandlerfamily.org.uk) wrote:
> Somewhile ago after looking at all the options, I came to the conclusion
> that raid1 + lvm + daily cron driven backups to another machine was my
> best solution for keeping.
That's what I do, too.
> Fortunately, I haven't had the need to test
> the full hypothosis, since todate none of my disks have failed.
Lucky you.
> I am currently planning my next upgrades - my desktop machine has run
> out of disk space, my server is getting old and has also almost run out
> of disk space so I need to plan an upgrade path for that too. I think
> raid 1 will allow me to "fail" one disk, and then replace it with a
> larger one, then "fail" the other add replace that too.
That'll work, but leaves you vulnerable to disk failure during the
transition. If you can temporarily connect the new disks (or just one
of them at a time) simultaneously with old ones, it'd be safer to
extend the raid1 into 3-way mirror first, then reduce it back to
2-way leaving one of the old ones out, and doing that again for
the second new disk.
> The only step I am not sure of is how to grow into the new spare
> space
Easiest way is to partition the new disks so that first partition
matches the old disks in size and create a separate raid1 pair
of the second partition, and add it as new physical volume.
It is also a bit safer against certain types of hardware problems.
(If the new disks are big enough you might wish to partition
them into even more pieces and raid them separately.)
If you want to stick to one raid1 array it is of course also
possible: mdadm --grow and pvresize are what you need.
--
Tapani Tarvainen
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