On 10/07/17 12:31, Bjoern Voigt wrote:
Peter Sikorski GTL wrote:
If you don’t use an identical raid controller (same model, maybe you need also same stepping and same bios version) on the new computer you will not be able to read your disks anymore. So if you don’t have a hardware support contract it is the safest way to buy 2 controller and use on as cold spare.
What is the main advantage of hardware RAID over software RAID on Linux? (I think performance and that a hardware RAID can automatically boot from the second disk, but I am a newbie in hardware RAID and so not sure.) Normally you get better performance. The controller take some work away from the cpu. Many controllers also have a lot of on board memory (at better ones also battery protected)
Per Jessen wrote:
TMK, an array built with an HP Smart Array controller can be recovered on any other HP Smart Array controller, the same or newer. I would not expect to recover on anything else.
I gather Dell have a very poor reputation in this regard. The point holds, however, MAKE SURE you can recover from a broken hardware raid controller, some you can, some you can't.
What is the main advantage of hardware RAID over software RAID on Linux? (I think performance and that a hardware RAID can automatically boot from the second disk, but I am a newbie in hardware RAID and so not sure.) Offloading to hardware is always about speed and less load on the CPU. Thanks, Peter and Peter.
So I will go for software RAID. The server is an backup server which runs backup jobs over night. Even RAID is not necessary, but on the wish-list. Disk performance is not so important. Most of the CPU power will be needed for the LUKS AES encryption and for the SSH/VPN/Rsync operations.
I thought, that the server can run some days with a broken disks until I go to the server location and replace the disk.
Raid 1? Make sure if you intend to run with broken disks that you have a 3-way mirror. I'd rather run raid-6 ... But I read, that this
only works 50%, because the HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen8 server always boots from the first disk or from a USB key. Probably the initrd from openSUSE on the USB key selects the working disk for further booting, if the first (boot) disk is broken. The lifetime of the USB key is a problem too. Some users suggest to install a SSD boot device. But this does not work as expected on this server.
Doing software raid, I would mirror the system partition across all drives, and also install grub on all drives. That way, if a drive disappears, the system will still boot from the first available drive. Snag is, if anything changes boot-wise, you need to make sure it gets mirrored across all drives. Cheers, Wol -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org