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PostPosted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 4:03 am 
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With the coming of hardware RAID support in V2 I am tempted to go the RAID (1, 5, 1+0) route like many of you.

With RAID 1 it is clear that one is pretty well covered if a disk fails.
If the RAID card fails chances are that the disk is in a condition that can be mounted under a non-raid controller.

With RAID 5 and 1+0 however, should the RAID card fail it is not clear, probably unlikely, that the array can be rebuild on another same model card. This comes from my yesteryear(pre 2001) experiences with hardware RAID cards.

This may mean that by relying on a large array in RAID5 (and 10)will mean loss of all data unless there is another backup of the data somewhere else.

So if performance is not an issue I am tempted to not go to RAID 5 and invest on additional drives to go either RAID 1 or keep it simple and have a backup server with the same storage.

I would like to hear everyone's opinion on the validity of the above. Have hardware RAID cards changed that much to invalidate my justification?


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PostPosted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 8:26 am 
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Joined: Fri May 26, 2006 5:00 pm
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I'm no expert on this but I has been my experience that it is common for a copy of the config info to be stored on the drives. This allows a replacement controller to "see" the config.

Also there is a trick that can be used with some controllers (of any age). If you replace the controller configure the array exactly as it was before. However don't init the array and then reboot. I have done this on some older Dell servers.

What is really comes down to is finding out what a particular controller supports. Personally I'm a big fan of raid 5.

H


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PostPosted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 9:44 am 
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Joined: Fri Jun 16, 2006 5:09 am
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Thanks for that. It looks promising!

I am also looking at RAID 5 with a 3ware 9500S-8 card.
Any experience with that?


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PostPosted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 6:35 pm 
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Joined: Fri Feb 25, 2005 11:05 pm
Posts: 34
Location: Canada
ALucas wrote:
With the coming of hardware RAID support in V2 I am tempted to go the RAID (1, 5, 1+0) route like many of you.

With RAID 1 it is clear that one is pretty well covered if a disk fails.
If the RAID card fails chances are that the disk is in a condition that can be mounted under a non-raid controller.

With RAID 5 and 1+0 however, should the RAID card fail it is not clear, probably unlikely, that the array can be rebuild on another same model card. This comes from my yesteryear(pre 2001) experiences with hardware RAID cards.

This may mean that by relying on a large array in RAID5 (and 10)will mean loss of all data unless there is another backup of the data somewhere else.

So if performance is not an issue I am tempted to not go to RAID 5 and invest on additional drives to go either RAID 1 or keep it simple and have a backup server with the same storage.

I would like to hear everyone's opinion on the validity of the above. Have hardware RAID cards changed that much to invalidate my justification?


I don't want to rain on anyone's parade and I must say that my experience is limited to other people's experience, but ...

On the various AV and home automation forums, I think that several people have run into hardware RAID card failulres where they lost the whole data set despite the expected redundancy/fault tolerance of the card.

IMHO, I can't help but to think that using two NAS Lite 2.0 server (especilly with the provision of RSYNC) replicating the data off-site would be a better backup/fault tolerance strategy than using a hardware RAID card. The added cost of the card would off set of the second server and address the need for a backup strategy.

Off course, that is only my opinion ... :?


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PostPosted: Sat Oct 21, 2006 11:04 am 
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Joined: Sat Oct 21, 2006 10:49 am
Posts: 7
Berg,

I think I may agree with this approach..I've been trying to decide which path to take to upgrade my storage and originally thought I'ld build another hardware raid array.

To be honest in three years using a consumer 3ware card I've not had a card failure, but one drive failure. However, I'm concerned the drives are "due". Now that we are looking at 500-750gb drives and multi TB arrays I fear the results of an array failure without an adequate backup strategy.

It seems to me that even if you own original media for all data on your array the time to re-rip that much data is not an option. Even if you lose one drive, 500-750gb of ripiing is quite an effort.

So it seems a mirrored server is truly viable. A 3ware 12 port raid card is going to cost $600-$700. You can easily build a Naslite system for less than this even with hot swap cages. Of course you need double the drives, but now you have a backup solution not just a raid solution.

I'm not a unix guy so I am trying to now gather an understanding of rsync and how to keep two servers in sync.

I am thinking of building a Win2003 server with 4 500gb drives to start with no raid and syncing them monthly to a Naslite2 server. And shutting down the Naslite2 server when not needed. (Is this necessary, will Naslite2 spin down the drives when inactive?).

Does rsync work like xcopy? or will it actually mirror the source drive? (that's what I want)

Anyone else already doing this that can offer help on the syncing ?


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PostPosted: Sat Oct 21, 2006 1:26 pm 
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Joined: Sun Feb 27, 2005 11:08 am
Posts: 225
ALucas wrote:
Thanks for that. It looks promising!

I am also looking at RAID 5 with a 3ware 9500S-8 card.
Any experience with that?


i do not believe that card is supported under the current NASLITE +

the 85xx is though


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PostPosted: Sun Oct 22, 2006 3:00 am 
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Joined: Fri Jun 16, 2006 5:09 am
Posts: 130
I realised that. I have since gone to a 7500-8 card giving me a 2TB array.
It turned out to be a very good choice.


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PostPosted: Mon Oct 23, 2006 5:49 pm 
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Joined: Sun Apr 02, 2006 9:05 pm
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Location: Up State NY in the USA!!!!
I know that the LSI RAID cards store the array configuration on the drives so a loss of a card doesn't kill the array and the data.

Mike


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 Post subject: Card Failure
PostPosted: Tue Nov 21, 2006 8:54 am 
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Joined: Tue Nov 21, 2006 8:47 am
Posts: 1
Hi

Under RAID 1 configuration if the RAID card fails can you still use one of the disks easily till a replacement card is available.

Thanks
G,


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