You are not logged in.

#1 2017-05-05 10:54

Dai_trying
Member
From: UK
Registered: 2015-12-14
Posts: 2,989

Should I use RAID on my server?

I have been given a couple of 2U servers (HP Prolient DL380 G4) they are quite (very) old, but are very usable, I have installed Debian Jessie on one of them as a first test (success!!!) and as I'm writing I am burning a Q4OS image to USB to try that out next. My question is though, should I use RAID (built in hardware) or just use the disks individually as I would in a home system and have them mounted in fstab as required.
My reason for asking is that from what I have read it would appear the main focus of a RAID controller is in the name (Redundant) I don't think this is a primary concern for me as I (usually) take regular backups. I also understand from more reading (thank you google) that there are also speed benefits (approx reading x6/writingx3 for a six disk array), but again I will not be using this as an internet service (at least not yet) so I am guesssing it would be less relevant to me.

Any thoughts, suggestions or experiences would be most welcomed on this.

Dai

Offline

#2 2017-05-05 11:26

q4osteam
Q4OS Team
Registered: 2015-12-06
Posts: 4,223
Website

Re: Should I use RAID on my server?

We can recommend using RAID (if possible), because we assume it's a great benefit for data safety, although it can not replace regular backups. If you need data snapshots, you will still need to back up.

Hardware RAIDs are very reliable, so you get the perfect safety and you will not have to worry about losing data. We see this as a great advantage.

Offline

#3 2017-05-05 11:58

Dai_trying
Member
From: UK
Registered: 2015-12-14
Posts: 2,989

Re: Should I use RAID on my server?

Thanks guys, I guess it will be better to use it, I now have to decide which raid level to use... My attempt to install Scorpion failed sad but I will now try Orion which I think would work as Debain Jessie XFCE installed without issue (except graphics but that is going to be a problem due to the minimal capabilities of the onboard chip[ATI RAGE XL]).

Offline

#4 2017-05-05 17:05

bin
Member
From: U.K.
Registered: 2016-01-28
Posts: 1,295

Re: Should I use RAID on my server?

Happy days! I spent many a long and interseting hour freezing in front of a couple of racks full of prollies - 360s and 380s - they can't be OLD surely???? Ah, yes a few years have passed haven't they....

I'm guessing you've got 6 of those lovely noisy SCSI drives in the  hot plug cradles? We normally ran them RAID 5  - though it does have overheads. I'd probably start off using 2 logical volumes of 3 drives each in RAID 1 mirror. I ran Centos 6 on ours - well the ones I controlled anyway mostly for the tech support system and other fun stuff. It worked very well. ATI graphics will be fine with Jessie.

Weak points we found were fans, memory modules overheating unless you're careful with the cabling behind the box - make sure arirways are clear. Drives could fail on cold boot after running happily for a few years. If you've got the original disks it's worth running the HP utils to check hardware, SMART disk data - though SMARTctl in the Debian repos will do most of that for you.

Slow boot - oh yeah they could take their time!!!

Enjoy!

Offline

#5 2017-05-05 17:50

Dai_trying
Member
From: UK
Registered: 2015-12-14
Posts: 2,989

Re: Should I use RAID on my server?

Thanks bin,
You are right a pretty noisy six bay SCSI "hot-plug" cradles, but I don't think I'll be hot plugging anything, I've never been happy adding or removing anything from a live system, well, usb is the exception.
I was thinking of having two raids of three disks as I have three 15k disks and three 10k disks in one machine, the other has six 10k disks so was thinking I might try a six disk raid for that and see how that goes, it will be good to have two identical systems side by side for comparison.
As you may have guessed I am a total novice to these systems and will be doing a lot of guesswork and probably reinstalls while I'm getting it all figured out. smile
I will definitely get the disks checked and keep an eye on the machines for a while until I know everything is running well.

I'm cold booting at the moment as I am only spending an hour or so at a time testing them, but once I have something I'm happy with I imagine it will run until something goes wrong (unless I break them before that big_smile )

Offline

Board footer

Powered by FluxBB