On Mon, Mar 17, 2003 at 12:19:32PM +0000, Scott Mitchell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Thanks -- you've confirmed what I suspected, that I could have avoided the > problems I saw by being a bit more cautious. My bad. > > Out of interest though, why do you advise not putting critical data on a > Vinum R5 volume? This one has been running fine for ~2 years under > reasonable loads. The disk failure was the first time it's required any > attention at all, and it seems the problems I had with that were mostly of > my own making. The mailing lists don't seem to be overrun with people > complaining that 'Vinum ate my files' :-) Because RAID5 main features are to increase data redundancy _and_ data availability. As you have discovered, it runs until it fails and then you'll have a hard time recovering it. Recovery is the most important (and difficult) part of it. When it fails to recover from the disk loss, what it's worth, then? The 2 years of uninterrupted service doesn't matter when it happens. Your data is unavailable and services down. Critical data is, by definition, critical :) I did put lots of data onto Vinum R5, because I did know that a day of downtime per half a year isn't problem. Recovery on the quiet (unmounted) volume did work and all was well. But for critical data I don't trust it (yet). Just my point of view. -- Vallo Kallaste To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
