On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 8:55 AM, Eric Shubert wrote: > Ben Browning wrote: > > Eric Shubert wrote: > >> Nice piece, Ben. I might add that with a reduction in hardware comes > >> an increase in reliability. > > > > To some degree, anyway... In N+1 clustering solutions, more hardware > > leads to better stability. > > Good point. My thinking context was in the absence of clustering and > raid. These are must-use technologies for stability. > > > I once had two servers with mission-critical > > services on them both throw hard drive fits one night(they had 2x scsi > > drives, but not RAIDED as we were using one exclusively for mail queue > > IO), so I simply limped them along long enough to drain their queues and > > halted them, dealing with them the next afternoon... > > > > Interesting. > > I heard a story of a system with 2 raid1 drives. The drives came from > the same lot which had a manufacturing defect. They died at the same > time! :( > > >> I worked on a server some time ago that had SCSI drives which had a > >> MTBF of 36 years. The server had 72 of them. One failed every 6 > >> months, like clockwork. > > > > I had a RAID under my control that had not been powered down in 5 years. > > When we finally did, half the drives did not spin back up :) > > Amazing what a little static friction can do! > > -- > -Eric 'shubes' > > --------------------------------------------------- > PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us > To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: > http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss > Just last night I had a weird issue with a file server with Raid... it wasn't until I plugged in my KVM that it became obvious why the file server wasn't accessible: No operating system found I rebooted and it was fine. Then I unplugged my KVM cables and pushed it back into the rack (it is a plain 4u pc style case) and the problem re-appeared. I plugged in the cables again and tried to login and got an error that it wasn't able to write the GDM file. I rebooted and got the same No operating system found error. I removed the side cover and checked out each plug that the drives were plugged into. It was when I was making sure that the raid controller card was properly seated that I noticed just how THIN it was. Apparently the raid controller card is so thin that merely sliding it back into the rack is enough to drop connection to the drives. -- JD Austin Twin Geckos Technology Services LLC jd@twingeckos.com 480.288.8195x201 http://www.twingeckos.com Samuel Goldwyn - "I read part of it all the way through."