[Discuss] raid issues

[richard.pieri at gmail.com (Richard Pieri)]

On 6/19/2014 8:50 PM, Stephen Adler wrote:
> getting a server with such large drive capacity, I'm wondering of all
> this raid stuff just gives on the warm fuzzies, but in fact you are just
> as vulnerable since you controllers can go and knock out half your
> drives (or whatever).

Redundant hardware isn't about warm fuzzies. It's about no single point
of failure. It's about your operation not stopping because something
broke. It's about having time to plan and execute a fix without the boss
breathing down your neck because business isn't happening.

Redundant hardware is NOT about preserving your data. A disk controller
goes stupid and you've lost everything. I've been saying that for years.


> Any comments on how to deal with say a 16 disks and what's the current
> lore on making large redundant disk arrays?

Depends on how much redundancy you want vs. how much performance you
want. The largest single array I have is 24 x 1TB disks in a single
raidz2 configuration. It's not optimal by any stretch but the array is
for staging tape backups so I don't need optimal.

-- 
Rich P.