[GRLUG] To Raid, or not to Raid, that is the question.

[Don Wood]

For my last employer we built a linux data storage server. We used software
raid 1 with nightly rsync. We also used LVM on top of it all and since we
had a programmer on staff we had him create a program to create nightly
snapshots with a rotation schedule, etc.. but I'd rather have a RAID 1 than
nothing at all.

-----Original Message-----
From: grlug-bounces at grlug.org [mailto:grlug-bounces at grlug.org] On Behalf Of
Mike Williams
Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2011 8:23 PM
To: Mailing List for LUG in greater Grand Rapids, MI area.
Subject: Re: [GRLUG] To Raid, or not to Raid, that is the question.

On 03/09/2011 08:05 PM, Don Wood wrote:
> If it's not for data redundancy then what is RAID for? If a backup is 
> made why bother with RAID at all? I'd rather have a RAID 1 than a backup.
> Although my preference would be RAID 1 with a backup. But really, RAID 
> is a form of redundancy so why not use it as such? Isn't a backup a 
> form of redundancy?
They are both forms of data redundancy but with different priorities. As
Adam Williams (no relation) said, RAID is for uptime rather than data
security. In the simple case of a hard drive failure, RAID lets you keep
going without interruption, where backup takes the system down until you
restore the backup. However, RAID is of no help at all for accidental
deletion of files or file system corruption. Generally, the best solution is
to have both.

And I agree on Linux's software RAID. The $35 RAID card you're thinking of
is almost certainly doing RAID in software anyway and is little more than a
regular hard drive controller, a BIOS, and a fancy driver. LVM on top of
RAID is an excellent way to go if you have the expertise to get it all
running. It was fairly miserable to do by hand last time I tried it, but
that was years ago and I think the situation is much better now.

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