LVM, usb drives, Active Directory

[Richard Pieri]

On Dec 16, 2009, at 7:42 AM, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> 
> Basically, I think that Dave Ritter's point was that USB itself is too
> slow and unreliable.  I personally would not place a production drive on
> USB.

Neither would I[1].  The other side of fault tolerance is minimizing recovery times when there is a fault and USB flash utterly fails to deliver on that.  So, the answer to 1 is definitely eSATA (or SCSI, or FC) and preferably with dedicated RAID controllers (possibly a non-issue depending on the enclosure).

The answer to 2 depends on what you are doing.  Specifically performance needs vs. fault tolerance.  If fault tolerance is at all necessary than RAID0 is right out.  Barring cost concerns I would use RAID10 (1+0), and RAID6 when cost is an issue and performance is not.

[1] The exception being production data that is infrequently modified and needs to be stored off-line most of the time.  Data like cryptographic keys used for code signings and configuration backups.  A thumb drive stored in a firebox is a safe way to store your firewall and router configuration backups.

--Rich P.