Quoth J Moore [snip] >And I'm suggesting that trying to be an expert in everything is not a realistic goal... why pick up a scalpel at all (to "haul your butt out of the fire") if your neighbor has invested years in becoming a thoracic surgeon? If surgery is required, I would choose to let the experienced surgeon haul my butt out of the fire, and concentrate my energy in my field of interest. Sorry if I confused you on that point.
If my neighbor has invested years in becoming a thoracic surgeon, I still have the problem of knowing that it is his expertise that I need. If I do need his services, how much knowledge of his field should I know for my own protection and so that I can make rational choices? In the case of RAID, just how effective is the magical incantation? Everything I've seen on this list by people who should know (that's the people who have survived disasters rather than wondering what happened to them) indicates that RAID has become a sales gimmick for customers with more dollars than sense, and unless handled extremely carefully is slower, much more likely to fail catestropically, with marginal gain in accessibility. The main problems are in rebuilding a failed disk and in extremely long downtimes while rebuilding. You don't need to be an expert in everything, but you do need to know enough to know when an expert is needed. Anything that claims that no expertise is needed when in fact expertise is needed is no friend.
