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Building a home server. Please help, DC!
40hz:
It's a maturation process for all of us.
A lot of the blush has come off the rose when it comes to RAID. Most of us have modified our opinions about it over the years. Old school "received wisdom" used to be: always go RAID-1 for the OS, with RAID-5 for everything else - plus a separate small and very fast drive for log/swap/cache files.
That old formula is absolute overkill for most of today's far more reliable hardware.
RAID doesn't reduce the chance of hardware problems. Nor does it reduce costs. Each additional drive you add will increase the number of potential failure points. Plus they'll also create heat and increased operating expense. No getting around that. Having three drives in a RAID-5 doesn't reduce the likelihood of a drive failing. It actually increases the possibility a having a drive fail by a factor of three or more. Some even argue that the additional busywork that comes from constantly striping and writing parity data actually increases wear and tear on the drive and makes a hardware failure more probable in a RAID array. Good thing it at least allows you to repair it without too much hassle. Because you will need to repair them. About once every three years in my experience.
Properly implemented, RAID reduces your risk of downtime. It does nothing to improve your reliability from an engineering perspective.
But today, it's less fretting about reliability and more about configuring for efficiency and performance. Because, in the end, the only real hope for data protection and preservation comes from having "known good" snapshots, file copies, and backups.
And all the fancy drive controllers in the world won't automatically give you those. ;D
superboyac:
It's a maturation process for all of us.
A lot of the blush has come off the rose when it comes to RAID. Most of us have modified our opinions about it over the years. Old school "received wisdom" used to be: always go RAID-1 for the OS, with RAID-5 for everything else - plus a separate small and very fast drive for log/swap/cache files.
That old formula is absolute overkill for most of today's far more reliable hardware.
RAID doesn't reduce the chance of hardware problems. Nor does it reduce costs. Each additional drive you add will increase the number of potential failure points. Plus they'll also create heat and increased operating expense. No getting around that. Having three drives in a RAID-5 doesn't reduce the likelihood of a drive failing. It actually increases the possibility a having a drive fail by a factor of three or more. Some even argue that the additional busywork that comes from constantly striping and writing parity data actually increases wear and tear on the drive and makes a hardware failure more probable in a RAID array. Good thing it at least allows you to repair it without too much hassle. Because you will need to repair them. About once every three or so years.
At least from my experience.
Properly implemented, RAID reduces your risk of downtime. It does nothing to improve your reliability from an engineering perspective.
But today, it's less fretting about reliability and more about configuring for efficiency and performance. Because, in the end, the only real hope for data protection and preservation comes from having "known good" snapshots, file copies, and backups.
And all the fancy drive controllers in the world won't automatically give you those. ;D
-40hz (August 02, 2011, 03:27 PM)
--- End quote ---
That sounds very sound to me. 8)
I think I have this figured out. Dell server from Stallard. A hard drive storage unit, like a Norco. Whatever power supplies and cables and other stuff I need to make it all work together. Slap it all into a 3-4' cabinet. Connect it to my router. Boom. I'm done.
Stoic Joker:
...Boom? Boom does not sound like a good conclusion to any project that does not involve explosives.
:D
superboyac:
;D
I got it from Dennis Reynolds in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia:
http://youtu.be/u_KIRUFbQiQ
40hz:
That's funny. I sometimes conclude a conversation with the word "whump!" which is my term for one of those ultra-low single "pulled" bass notes that end a rock song. Y'know...one of these notes:
(Think something like at the very end of Jethro Tull's classic Aqualung.)
It's my weird way of saying "Ok. I'm done with this. Next song please!" ;D :Thmbsup:
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