| Rich Freeman on 7 Apr 2013 07:36:42 -0700 |
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| Re: [PLUG] RAID Linux or RAID BIOS? |
On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 10:23 AM, K.S. Bhaskar <bhaskar@bhaskars.com> wrote: > Use Linux RAID, not the BIOS RAID - if you ever need to replace your > motherboard, the new motherboard BIOS may not be compatible. Yup - stay away from the BIOS RAID. It is still software RAID, just not implemented as well. Linux mdadm is far more flexible - you can reshape your array while it is still online. About the only thing I'd consider before mdadm would be a real RAID card with battery backup, but that will run you $1000. If you're going to be spending that kind of money you should also be thinking in terms of other enterprise-scale technologies (SAN/etc). Keep in mind RAID isn't a good substitute for backups. The only real failure mode it protects against is physical drive failure. Even then your server could still require rebooting or even hardware fidgeting (depends on how good your controllers are and how the drive fails). Oh, think carefully before striping your swap. Swap is obviously expendible, but if your swap device goes down your system will likely panic. I have my /boot on mdadm raid1. You do need to follow the appropriate guides when setting this up as it needs to be in a format that is grub-friendly. Also, at least with grub1 the old metadata formats which are required tend to make it a bit flaky when drives get added/removed/etc - sometimes I've found my /boot degraded and I need to re-add the appropriate device. The old mdadm metadata formats which are grub-friendly aren't as robust when it comes time to auto-assemble everything. Oh, and if you're installing mdadm, you should almost certainly use LVM on top of it. I'd recommend LVM on any install, but in any of the situations where it would get in the way mdadm would also get in the way. Rich ___________________________________________________________________________ Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug