On 2013-05-20 07:46, Nick Holland wrote: > On 05/20/13 00:52, Hugo Osvaldo Barrera wrote: > > Hi, > > > > I'm building myself an openbsd-based fileserver, which will initially > > have three disks with softraid in RAID5 mode. > > > > I've three questions regarding softraid: > > > > 1) I intend on using a single-core 1.8Ghz Atom processor I have lying > > around. Would that limit my performance too much? I'll be using this > > fileserver mostly for media (movies/series/music) and some ocassional > > backups. Can anyone share what CPU they've used and their experience? (I'm > > clarifying my intended usage for the fileserver since I think it's quite > > relevant to say if the CPU is or isn't enough). > > Wrong question, I think. More than processor is memory (caching) and > disk interface (ahci rocks), network interface, etc.
Oh, great, that's good to know. I though processor power was a very limiting factor in this. Memory and network won't be an issue in this case. > > > 2) How do I add additional volumes to an already created softraid > > volume? I intend on adding additional disks as necessary. Is it possible? > > Not in the way you are likely thinking. > Besides, your Atom board probably has a rather finite amount of > expandability. Hmm. That makes everything far more complicated. :/ Actually, this motherboard I've lying around has four ports, and there are some other mini-itx one with up to seven ports. > > > 3) The man pages report RAID5 as experimental. I'm curious, why is > > this so? Is it just not-very-thoroughly tested, or is there some > > missing feature? I read on a 2010 presentation that rebuild was not > > implemented yet, is this still so? > > That's really a question you will need to find out though > experimentation before you implement (i.e., you MUST practice this > recovery stuff before going into production), but yes, RAID5 rebuild is > still not there, so I would NOT recommend going this route. Yes, indeed. It's way to dangerous and I don't have the storage to create a dump and rebuild if a disk fails. > > However, a nice little RAID1 system to start, hopefully leaving you two > SATA ports for the next generation/upgrade disks. Regrettably, I've too much data to take this route. The costs are prohibitive, and I'd need way too many disks. > > Nick. > Thanks, -- Hugo Osvaldo Barrera [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
