Looking For RAID Hardware/Software Advice

[Mark Phillips]

Lisa,

Thanks for the link to Frys. I thought about a single external drive as it
is well within my budget. However, wouldn't a RAID on a slower CPU be a
better solution? At least if a drive fails not all is lost as with the
single external drive. I also think the RAID on a slower CPU will be
faster...is that the case? I have a 100MB Ethernet LAN for most of the
machines...two machines are remote across the Internet.

The problem is simple - trying to backup more than 150GB to a 150GB
drive....I have just run out of room. :-(

Mark

On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 10:28 AM, Lisa Kachold <lisakachold at obnosis.com>wrote:

>
> http://shop1.frys.com/%7BA7LPrdOKRokR7xrD8aYi8Q**.node2%7D/product/5718492
>
> Adding memory is probably not going to assist your plight unless you are
> swapping now?  A full backup analysis would be required, but it's doubtful
> it's memory, rather network bottleneck and schedule based.
>
> It's possible that your backup application is no longer efficient?  Might
> try the NAS approach?  Even via firewire or USB?
>
> www.Obnosis.com |  http://wiki.obnosis.com | http://hackfest.obnosis.com(503)754-4452
>
>
> PLUG HACKFESTS - http://uat.edu Second Saturday of Each Month Noon - 3PM
> > Subject: Re: Looking For RAID Hardware/Software Advice
> > From: craigwhite at azapple.com
> > To: plug-discuss at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> > Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2009 09:58:27 -0700
> >
> > On Fri, 2009-01-16 at 09:36 -0700, Mark Phillips wrote:
> > > I am running out of room for my backups. I use backuppc and I have
> > > almost filled a 150GB drive with backups from 7 computers, and I need
> > > to add another 2 computers to the set. I have an old Dell Poweredge
> > > 1300 server (Pentium III 550 Mhz, 500 MB RAM, PCI 33.3Mhz) that I
> > > could turn into a backup server. I am looking for suggestions/thoughts
> > > on how to set this up. I need to keep the cost down as much as
> > > possible; under $150.
> > >
> > > My initial thoughts:
> > >
> > > * Keep current 72 GB drive for OS (debian testing, about 68% full)
> > > * Add two 500 GB SATA drives and a PCI SATA controller ~$130
> > > * Software RAID and LVM for the two drives
> > > * Move current 150 GB of backups to the RAID
> > > * Backuppc now runs on this machine and slowly fills up the RAID
> > >
> > >
> > > My questions:
> > >
> > > 1. Should I keep the 72 GB drive for OS, or put it on the RAID?
> > >
> > > 2. I can add another CPU (P III 550 MHz) processor to the box - is it
> > > worth the effort to find one? I found one source for $5/CPU, I just
> > > need to find the heat sink and mounting hardware. Will this improve
> > > performance?
> > >
> > > 3. The box has a built-in SCSI 68-pin Ultra2/wide bus/controller, but
> > > SCSI drives are more expensive, at least from a cursory google search.
> > > Is this correct? I don't think I can use SCSI drives within my budget
> > > constraint.
> > >
> > >
> > > 4. Would upgrading the memory to 1GB improve performance - top shows:
> > > Mem: 646676k total, 639300k used 7376k free, 64548k
> > > buffers
> > > This would add another ~$60 to my cost.
> > >
> > >
> > > 5. Should I look at hardware RAID cards - they seem very cheap, so
> > > perhaps software is better?
> > >
> > > 4. Does this plan make sense, or is there a better way to proceed for
> > > about the same cost?
> > ----
> > 1. One of the tricky things about backuppc (and I don't use it so I am
> > working from just a general understanding of things) is that it
> > creates/utilizes lots of hard linked files so if the boot os dies, your
> > backup may die along with it. The point of RAID is the redundancy part
> > which means things just keep working even if there's a complete failure
> > of a single hard drive (assuming everything but RAID 0). Having a RAID
> > array for your OS would ensure that.
> >
> > 2. Real hard to match processors at this point and unlikely you would
> > find one that exactly matched. Might be easier to find 2 that match each
> > other and install them both but for a backup box, that seems
> > unnecessary.
> >
> > 3. Yes, SCSI drives are more expensive - but performance should be much
> > better.
> >
> > 4. RAM may help a little. Free shows output of virtual memory but
> > doesn't suggest how much real RAM you have there. Assuming a text based
> > interface (not GUI), 256 MB RAM for what you're doing should be enough.
> >
> > 5. Cheap RAID hardware cards are cheap because they suck. Most of the
> > SATA 'RAID' cards are either 'fake' RAID (they aren't really hardware
> > RAID) and perform especially poorly on commonly used RAID 5 (3 drives
> > minimum but maximum drive space).
> >
> > 6. Makes sense.
> >
> > Software RAID works well. You can create a RAID volume for your OS is
> > you wish - i.e. one drive on SCSI and one on SATA but the suck thing is
> > that...
> > - You can't just convert from an existing filesystem to a RAID array.
> > You'd have to copy it all off, create your RAID array, copy the files
> > back and then fix the boot issues
> > - RAID works much better if the drives are on different controllers - a
> > controller can only write one drive at a time.
> >
> > Craig
> >
> > ---------------------------------------------------
> > PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> > To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
> > http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
>
> ------------------------------
> Windows Live™: Keep your life in sync. See how it works.<http://windowslive.com/howitworks?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_t1_allup_howitworks_012009>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------
> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
> http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/pipermail/plug-discuss/attachments/20090116/cca8934e/attachment.htm