Re: Age old question: FBSD vs Linux

On Tue, Jun 09, 2009 at 10:57:52AM -0400, [email protected] wrote:

I won't touch a religious war between FreeBSD and Linux with a
ten-foot pole.

> Secondly, I am also hearing that software RAID has come a long way in 
> terms of performance and recoverability of late.  For example, vinum now 
> allows root partitions to be mirrored?  I will be going from SAS/SCSI to 
> SATA in any case.  It's become apparent that most customers would much 
> rather have a lot more storage than a few ms quicker access.  Again, 
> thoughts and experiences appreciated.

When deploying 1U Linux servers, it is rare for me to specify anything
other than software RAID-1 across two disks. The cost of a second drive is
tiny compared to the cost of recovering from backup when one disk fries.

Database servers get hardware RAID controllers, mostly because they like
lots of spindles, and it's hard to buy a large multiport card that doesn't
come with a decent RAID controller.  Areca, 3Ware and HP's CCISS are all
pretty good. I like RAID 1, RAID 10, and single disks for scratch space.

I also use software RAID 1 on desktops, where getting the user
back up and running is much faster.

In all cases, it's important to be monitoring the health and age
of drives. RAID 1 also makes it easy to do upgrades on
non-hotswap hardware: one power-down, replace one of the disks
with a new one, power-up and introduce the new disk to the RAID.
It resyncs in the background while the user continues.

-dsr-

-- 
http://tao.merseine.nu/~dsr/eula.html is hereby incorporated by reference.

You can't defend freedom by getting rid of it.
-- 
Eat sushi frequently. - Avi
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