Brian wrote:
Im sorry I forgot to ask again if its worth setting to the Time Limited Recovery to its Raid counterpart mode. The reason I ask is because all I can find to do this is a DOS file so Im not sure how I would go about doing it in OpenSolaris.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-Limited_Error_Recovery#Western_Digital_Time_Limit_Error_Recovery_Utility_-_WDTLER.EXE
All it lists is a .exe file, so is changing these settings something that must
be done? I guess I am unclear on how important this is, though I have read
that someone lost their data 'possibly' due to this.
You should set TLER. You'll have to boot to DOS (via a floppy or CDROM
image) - look at the FreeDOS.org website for details about getting a
free bootable image.
Yea I have a cheap nvidia video card I found that should work with this. I
found this MB at Fry's for under 100 dollars so I figured Id try it out. Its
probably a discontinued line of server motherboards by SuperMicro so I figured
it probably would be an OK board.
1.) Why would I put the boot volumes into a mirrored configuration? I figure
if the OS blows up Ill just format it and load it on again. Is it really worth
it to have the OS mirrored?
You /should/ mirror your OS, especially if you're just leaving at
another location and don't want to mess with it very often. You gets
lots of benefits from the redundancy it offers (including all those
nifty ZFS checksum-based autorecovery ones). I see 100GB 2.5" SATA
notebook drives for $50 at my local store all the time.
2.) What is the benefit of hooking the SATA hard drives up to the SAS port?
Is it not wise to put the OS hard drives and the data hard drives in the same
port?
The 1068E (and most other modern SAS controller chips) are really
SAS/SATA controllers. They autodetect the drive type attached to them,
and react accordingly. I'd use the SAS ports since the 1068E is really
a better controller than the ICH9R in terms of performance.
I suggested putting the OS drives on the SATA ports for simplicity's
sake, since most motherboards make it easy to boot from the SATA drives,
and it requires a BIOS reconfig to boot from the SAS ports. Not
difficult to do, jut another step.
3.) Ill try to figure that out, shouldn't be too hard as presumably its in the
BIOS
Yes. It should be in the BIOS. The SATA config will be in the
motherboard BIOS, while the SAS controller config will be separate (push
CTRL-L or something similar during BIOS init).
4.) Ha thats pretty hillarious that it has trouble operating in the RAM
configuration I picked. Who would have thought? I guess Ill pick up two 1 Gig
sticks to make it 6 Gigs, as I dont really want to spend another 100 dollars on
Ram.
5.) Maybe in a few years
6.) Overkill indeed however who doesn't like power?
"You haven't said what you plan to use the server for, which will drive
how you want to configure the drives (i.e. RAIDZ or mirror/striped)"
This is going to be used for my parents business (Im merely setting it up for
them and then leaving it.) So basically what I want is reliability and
redundancy. I want there to be very little chance of data loss as the business
they are in requires them to keep all documents. Currently they have them all
on a precarious external hard drive so I want this thing to basically be
equivalent to Raid 6. I also want to be able to leave it and have it perform
without touching it for decent periods of time. Usually I would use Linux as
its great for that but I decided to try out ZFS. Now I read that its advisable
to scrub the system every week or month, is it possible just to make a script
that will do this so I dont have to be there? Also I know ZFS can use blank
hard drives that will activate when a disk fails, is this feature well made in
ZFS? Meaning is it trustworthy? I guess I'm just used to trusting several
hundred dollar Raid cards, seems odd to be back to software.
Thank you for your help
ZFS is great for what you describe. For maximum redundancy, you'll want
to use RAIDZ2 (the analogue of RAID-6). To set it up (assuming your
drives are on what the OS thinks is controller c2):
zpool create tank -m <mountpoint> raidz2 c2d0 c2d1 c2d2 c2d3
This will give you 2 drives worth of data space, and 2 redundant drives.
Bob already gave you the scrub and monitoring scripts. Personally, I'd
look at turning on the Time Slider feature to enable automatic snapshots
(probably weekly or so in your case).
You also are going to need some form of backup strategy, since you
indicated that the data is important to your parent's data. RAID isn't
enough - that just helps against disk failure. You need something to
protect against SERVER failure, so look into a cheap tape drive or
consider the external USB drive. In either case, your parents will need
to backup the machine nightly, and take the tape/USB drive home with
them at night (and bring it back in the morning).
--
Erik Trimble
Java System Support
Mailstop: usca22-123
Phone: x17195
Santa Clara, CA
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