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RAID array
RAID array
Posted Mar 19, 2008 22:20 UTC (Wed) by quotemstr (subscriber, #45331)In reply to: RAID array by Cato
Parent article: On the vger.kernel.org outage
We use 3ware controllers at work, which can be set up to automatically and periodically verify that no sectors ave failed. That feature has already saved us once.
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RAID array
Posted Mar 19, 2008 23:38 UTC (Wed) by daniel (subscriber, #3181) [Link]
"Personally I would only use ZFS, NetApp or something similar that does a lot of media scrubbing, sector checksumming etc, in addition to basic RAID." Would that not be an admission of defeat for Linux?
RAID array
Posted Mar 20, 2008 22:29 UTC (Thu) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]
Yes, it means I could only use Linux currently for storage if I went for ZFS/FUSE. This is a significant weakness in the Linux story - perhaps btrfs will go some way to fixing this, but overall it seems that Linux RAID and associated sector-checksumming filesystems are a long way behind where it needs to be. I don't think this stuff is particularly hard to do, but it does require some focused work on btrfs and on RAID improvements, and there are patent risks due to the Sun/NetApp patent lawsuits, of course.
RAID array
Posted Mar 20, 2008 6:46 UTC (Thu) by pbrutsch (subscriber, #4987) [Link]
That is a very common feature, and most certaily not limited to 3ware! I have Areca, Adaptec, and LSI Logic RAID cards that can all do the same.
RAID array
Posted Mar 20, 2008 12:23 UTC (Thu) by wurtel (subscriber, #7155) [Link]
Linux software raid (md) can also check an array for problems, Debian offers to run a cronjob every month to do that, if you install mdadm. Coupled with SMART autotests you're pretty safe.
RAID array
Posted Mar 20, 2008 20:20 UTC (Thu) by hmh (subscriber, #3838) [Link]
If you want to be pretty safe, you'll need to test every *day*, not once a month. I know this from experience.
RAID array
Posted Mar 20, 2008 22:31 UTC (Thu) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]
This sounds like a useful media scrubbing feature. However, sector checksumming seems like it requires filesystem changes, and I've only seen that proposed in btrfs, which is in early development stages.