RE: The Small Company's Guide to Hard Drive Failure and Linux

[surreal () delusory org]

Dave

Wanna sleep soundly? Get yourself some manly, enterprise-class external
storage gear - DEC->COMPAQ->HP (maybe RonCo's next?) StorageWorks.
Hiding your HDs inside the CPU box just isn't worth the pain.

You can pick up discontinued, but new, gear and start your very own SAN
for under $5K with HSG80 controllers. If you just want one or two boxes
hanging off the storage, go with something like the HSZ70's (copper SCSI
cables 'stead of fiber) - that'll set you back about $2K.

You'll have fast, reliable RAID5*, redundant controllers & power
supplies, online hot spares, and pretty blinky lights for about the
cost of one high-end gaming box. Buy yourself a halfway-decent UPS at
the same time to protect the investment.

I'm in love with the "EMA12000", but the fibrechannel HBA (grandiose
disk controller) is pretty pricey. Go with the HSZ70 and you can use a
common-as-dirt Adaptec SCSI card.

When a drive fails, one of your green blinky-blights goes amber, and one
of your hot-spares jumps right in. You also get a nice idiot-tolerant
audible alarm in case you don't regularly gaze at the blinkylights.
I've got, most likely, every incarnation of StorageWorks  dating back
to VAX/VMS and 1.2GB 16-bit SCSI drives (RZ-26, fwiw) running in the
room next to me. The stuff is solid. 

I know a great vendor, if anyone cares. ;-)

Surreal

You'll develop an unhealthy emotional attachment to StorageWorks...

* "adaptive RAID 3+5", whatever the fuck that means. Looks and tastes
like RAID 5.

> Ok, this is what I don't get - if you're using Software RAID on Linux, 
> then what do you do when your boot drive dies? I'm looking for hardware 
> RAID because I like the idea of a quick hotswap. I don't see how you 
> could do that with software.
>
> -dave
>
>
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