Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community  

Go Back   Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community > Interests > Tilted Technology


 
 
LinkBack Thread Tools
Old 08-26-2010, 07:03 PM   #1 (permalink)
Tilted Cat Head
 
Cynthetiq's Avatar
 
Administrator
Location: Manhattan, NY
anyone RAID?

I've got a new business venture and will need to do regular backups of the site. I'm thinking of a RAID enclosure, anyone have any suggestions?

Newegg.com - SANS DIGITAL TR8M-B 8 Bay SATA to eSATA (Port Multiplier) JBOD Enclosure

I've been thinking of this one or smaller.

I do have another box that does have a JMB363, and I think a SATA raid controller, not sure,

ASUS P5B LGA 775 Intel P965 Express ATX Intel
__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.
Cynthetiq is offline  
Old 08-26-2010, 07:47 PM   #2 (permalink)
Junkie
 
Location: My head.
This is much better than what you have in mind. 4 x 2.5" SAS SATA HDD Hot-Swap Backplane RAID Cage New. It works perfectly and fits in a large PC case. You can get 1TB 2.5" HDD's for an arm and a leg.

Last edited by Xerxys; 08-26-2010 at 07:50 PM..
Xerxys is offline  
Old 08-26-2010, 07:57 PM   #3 (permalink)
Tilted Cat Head
 
Cynthetiq's Avatar
 
Administrator
Location: Manhattan, NY
I'm set on 3.5 HDDs because they aren't so expensive for 2TB, I'm even looking at 8 bays because I want have lots of storage. I thought of a cage like that looking at something like the COOLER MASTER STB-3T4-E3-GP 4-in-3 Device Module Hardisk Cage but am afraid it may not fit in my tool free Cooler Master Centurion 5 midtower
__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.
Cynthetiq is offline  
Old 08-27-2010, 02:44 PM   #4 (permalink)
rightUp
 
Cavi Mike's Avatar
 
Location: San Fran, NY USA
I don't know much about RAID setups but I was led to believe the point of running a RAID setup was to avoid having to do back-ups. School me.
__________________
pearls ain't free
Cavi Mike is offline  
Old 08-27-2010, 03:24 PM   #5 (permalink)
Tilted Cat Head
 
Cynthetiq's Avatar
 
Administrator
Location: Manhattan, NY
oh the convo's I've had. I'll try to put it into something comprehensive and understandable post.
__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.
Cynthetiq is offline  
Old 08-27-2010, 05:40 PM   #6 (permalink)
Junkie
 
all good redundancy systems do raid and backups (multiple locations). The problem with only raid is if your raid controller dies you still lose everything. Also with backups if the building burns down you still lose everything. Thus any vital data must be backed up multiple times over multiple locations. RAID is primarily to save you the headaches of having to rebuild systems and restore from those backups.
Rekna is offline  
Old 08-27-2010, 06:00 PM   #7 (permalink)
Young Crumudgeon
 
Martian's Avatar
 
Location: Canada
RAID does not provide a back up, because all data is replicated in real time. RAID does provide increased uptime and/or increased throughput by correcting for drive failures.

Backups should ideally occur offsite. A CRON job to a remote FTP server is pretty ideal and saves a lot of labour.
__________________
I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame
Martian is offline  
Old 08-29-2010, 09:46 AM   #8 (permalink)
©
 
StanT's Avatar
 
Location: Colorado
Note that there are a variety of RAID configurations. Cyn is likely talking RAID5.

Standard RAID levels - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I use RAID0 on my home system. Contrary to the Wikipedia article, I see a nearly 2x improvement in drive performance.

RAID5 is used to increase server uptime. A single drive failure will impact performance; but will not cause the server to fail. In most cases, the failed drive can be replaced and recovered hot. RAID5 does not eliminate the need for backups.
StanT is offline  
Old 08-30-2010, 03:26 AM   #9 (permalink)
Insane
 
Location: at home
StanT could it be you are referring to RAID 1 not 0.

That link is very informative on RAID.

Following is a summary from that link and additions from my experience.

Different RAID levels have different purposes, none of them eliminates the need for (off-site) backup.
With 2 hard drives there are 2 options, mirroring or striping the data.
Mirroring lets the 2 drive act as a single drive with the size of the smaller drive (they should be identical ). Performance is similar to having single drive, gain or loss in performance depends on the setup. In case of single drive failure the drive can be replaced and RAID rebuilt (slowly) without data loss.
Striping lets the 2 drive act as a single drive with the combined sizes of both drives. Performance is close to combined performance of the drives (2x). In case of single drive failure all data is lost (Generally everything is lost, depending on the setup a professional data recovery might get some data back at high cost).

These are general statements, actual performance and redundancy depends on hardware and software included in the setup.

Hope this is of help to someone.
ZB
__________________
Sodomy non sapiens. : I'm buggered if I know
Zweiblumen is offline  
Old 08-30-2010, 05:32 AM   #10 (permalink)
©
 
StanT's Avatar
 
Location: Colorado
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zweiblumen View Post
StanT could it be you are referring to RAID 1 not 0.

Nope, I stripe for performance. I run a 2x chance of failure for a 2x improvement in I/O; I do backup everything I care about.
StanT is offline  
Old 09-02-2010, 09:42 AM   #11 (permalink)
Tilted
 
Location: Wisconsin
This is the best overview that I've run across for describing all the different RAID versions.

AC&NC - RAID.edu - RAID Tutorial & Benchmarking Tools

And Rekna & Martain are right... RAID just keeps you up during a drive failure. There is still a need for off site backups if you are working on an enterprise level. As was stated... if the building burns down... no RAID or on site backup will save you.

Oh... and for what it's worth... I run RAID 0 on my main PCs to boost performance. They are backed up weekly to my home server which runs RAID 1. I used to run RAID 5... but with Terra byte HDs now being so cheap I fell it is a waste for my home application. The house server also runs a weekly backup to an external HD that I can take with me to friends and family's houses to share larger files than what are conveniently hosted through my FTP site.

Since my parents don't have a home server, I've set their PC up on RAID 5 to give them a boost in speed along with some HD failure insurance (which paid off about a week ago).

One of my friends (who also lacks a home server) felt the need to set up his home PC on RAID 6, although I'm not sure that it has ever paid off for him.
__________________
More is more and less is less,
More is better and twice as much is good too.
Not enough is bad,
And too much is never enough unless it's just about right.

Last edited by MacGyver; 09-02-2010 at 09:59 AM..
MacGyver is offline  
Old 09-07-2010, 10:51 PM   #12 (permalink)
Upright
 
Location: Virginia
I recently had a RAID-5 setup go south on me. It was the typical failure mode for these things. One drive failed, out of four in the array, I swapped in a new one, and while it was rebuilding one of the other 3 in the array failed.

One failed drive is tolerable, because it can calculate the missing chunks using parity calculations that it sprinkles around on the other drives. But with two drives down, you're S.O.L.

When that second drive failed, I knew I was hosed. Luckily I had backups and wasn't depending on the RAID system, so nothing of value lost, but restoring everything was an unpleasant way to spend a weekend.

Just a cautionary tale. A lot of people set up RAID arrays with several identical (same manufacturer, model, purchased at the same time) drives. If you do that, there is a fairly good risk that more than one of them might decide to conk out at the same time, or close enough to it so that you might be rebuilding during the second failure. In RAID-5, that means badness. In RAID-10 (stripes across mirrors) or 0+1, you have a 1 in 3 (maybe 1 in 2?) shot of losing your data with two drives out, depending on which two go.

Definitely not a replacement for a good backup strategy. Reduces you risk of downtime, for sure, but not a backup system.

And if you do decide to go with RAID, particularly RAID-5, do yourself a favor and buy a mix of drives (same capacity and RPM, obviously), different manufacturers or at least models. It's not like buying tires for your car, where you want them to wear at the same rate; you very much *don't* want that. You want them to all fail at different times, and the only way I know how to do that (aside from retiring them prior to failure after a certain number of hours in service, which is something to strongly consider!) is to go for diversity.

Last edited by Kadin; 09-07-2010 at 10:56 PM..
Kadin is offline  
 

Tags
raid

Thread Tools

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are On
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are On



All times are GMT -8. The time now is 04:12 AM.

Tilted Forum Project

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
Search Engine Optimization by vBSEO 3.6.0 PL2
© 2002-2012 Tilted Forum Project

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360