Mark M. Hoffman on 25 May 2007 16:14:45 -0000


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Re: [PLUG] Linux (Debian) and raid


Hi Doug:

> On Fri, 25 May 2007, Mark M. Hoffman wrote:
> > 1) Most onboard RAID controllers do most of the work in software anyway.
> >
> > 2) If your board dies, you'll have to replace it with one that has that
> > same controller.  With software RAID, any board that can connect to the
> > disks can be used in a pinch.

* Doug Crompton <doug@crompton.com> [2007-05-25 00:40:02 -0400]:
> Well not sure what happens in linux but in windows I have experience with
> thie. My board did die and I needed to get info to a new system. All I did
> was attach one of the raid 1 mirrored drives to the new system. It saw it
> as a standalone drive and I was able to read from it fine.

I'm not talking about merely getting your data off the disk(s).  I meant: if
your board dies, you can swap in another board and continue running as usual,
with the RAID array still intact - no need to reinstall or recover anything.

That is (usually) only possible with a hardare RAID controller if the new board
has the same controller.  BTW, that is why we keep spare controllers on the
shelf for the machines I admin that have hardware RAID controllers.

> So. at least in Windows, there is no special coding of the drive data.
> Both drives are simply written with the same data. It is simple and gets
> the job done.
> 
> I wish Linux could be so easy!

It is, try it.

(...)

> I was trying to avoid the complication of LVM, etc. I just want ext3 or
> equiv partitions and mirrored raid.

You can do that too, if that's what you want.

Regards,

-- 
Mark M. Hoffman
mhoffman@lightlink.com

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