On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 04:33:19PM -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > On 03/18/08 16:03, Damon L. Chesser wrote: > > Ron Johnson wrote: > >> > >> On 03/18/08 15:41, Damon L. Chesser wrote: > >> [snip] > >> > >>> changes in HD tech). 6. I have seen dozens of catastrophic hardware > >>> controller failures with complete data lost and not one mdadm failure. > >>> > >> > >> That just means you're using sucky hardware. We've been using h/w > >> controllers for 15 years, and never had a problem. > >> > >> Of course, they are proprietary, and from a Tier 1 vendor, cost a > >> lot of money, and maintenance fees are high. > >> > >> But we've never lost data from a controller failure. (And damned > >> little loss from any other reason, either, since there's a 24x7 > >> admin staff that pays attention to drive failure lights, and > >> replaces them immediately.) > >> > > And that detailed care makes all the difference in the world! Now limp > > along with a drive failure, add a controller that needs updating and > > perform the update. Suddenly you find the meta data is "unstable" and > > you can not recover from it. I have NOT seen data loss from a > > professional, on the ball data center. > > Well heck, no one who cares about his data would do that... You > replace the drive, let it rebuild, and *then* do the update. > > Or... don't buy sucky h/w in the first place. If you *really* care > about your data, you spend the extra bucks for quality h/w that has > a competent support staff behind it. And you pay for an adequate > backup solution! > > Otherwise, "you" are blaming on the h/w the sins of the humans who > bought the crummy h/w.
See, here's the thing. That I in RAID is for inexpensive. The idea is to increase reliability on the cheap. You could engineer an amazing HD with a MTBF rating of 150 years (hyperbole, but you get the point), but it would be hideously expensive. Unless you are using RAID to improve I/O rather than for redundancy, putting expensive hardware into the equation defeats the purpose of a RAID in the first place. Since I don't have major I/O performance requirements, just redundancy requirements, I use software RAID. I probably always will. I know that even if 3ware (for example -- replace with the name of your favorite HW RAID manufacturer) goes out of business, my computer catches fire, and one of my mirrored drives dies, I can buy an off-the-shelf system, install Debian, and rebuild my RAID. > Ron Johnson, Jr. --Greg -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
