Re: HP proliant ML115 G5 on debian lenny
On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 03:19:01PM -0400, Douglas A. Tutty wrote:
> > > Well, debian has different requirements re licensing of modules. Your
> > > guess may be wrong if HP has provided a propriatary module for the
> > > kernel that e.g. suse has included in its kernel but debian can't
> > > include. For some things (e.g. the nVidia driver), you can still get an
> > > install done and add a module later; for the boot drive that becomes a
> > > bit of a problem :)
I understand what a boot drive is now. But I still do not understand why
'for the boot drive that becomes a bit of a problem'. particularly I
don't understand what 'that' refers to. Does that mean I will fail to
install lenny on it or adding module on boot drive is more of a problem?
> For extra redundancy, you may want to experiment and try installing a
> system onto a 6 GB partition on one of the drives. I bet you'll find it
> more than big enough. You could then reinstall, but put a 6 GB (or 10 or
> 12, whatever) partition at the beginning of each drive, in a raid1
> fashion. In this way, if any drive fails, you'll still be able to boot
> the system.
This is another piece of great advice. I will take it.
> Will they be backing-up at once or one-at-a-time?
>
> If one-at-a-time, then unless those servers are using raid striping, the
> throughput of the servers' hard disk will be similar to the throughput
> of the backup server's hard disk. However, if all three boxes will be
> spitting data to the backup server as fast as their hard drive (and
> network) can move the data, then the backup server will need to be of
> higher performance if it to avoid being a bottleneck.
I have not not come up with any details(such as this) for the backup.
But considering what you have said, I will do the back up one at a time.
Since two servers I will backup is certain to be faster than the backup
server.
> Another is that the raid cards have their own cache. If you don't have
> a UPS, then you'll want to set up the cache so that they don't tell the
> OS that the data is on disk until it really is on disk (not just in its
> cache), unless you get a raid card with a battery backup for its cache.
Thanks for this kind reminder. I will definetely use UPS.
> > I will only use raid 1, that is because this is simple and effective as
> > it appears.
>
> However, re performance (above), if you have three boxes streaming data
> to the backup server, you may want raid10 (which you can do with
> software raid) or raid 50, or raid60 (which can handle multiple drive
> failures). Its always a trade-off.
It seems I need to figure out which raid to use. I am not locked to
raid 1. But simplicity is always welcomed.
> 1. Backup the data, somewhere on the same box (optional)
That is what we are doing, but I think it is not good enough, so we are
buying a dedicated server.
> 3. Copy the data from the backup server to some remote location
> either with removable media or a second backup server at a
> remote location. A lot of this depends on the size of the
> backup set and your options of remote location. I keep a backup
> in the bank's safety deposit box.
safety deposit box? are you serious:) so how to vent the heat?
I will put the backup machine in a different building.
Thank you very much Doug. I really need to do more homework on it.
Regards,
--
Zhengquan
Reply to: