[CentOS] Re: raid5 crash

[Les Mikesell]

On Sat, 2005-07-09 at 18:04, Bryan J. Smith wrote:

> I really hate it when I go into a department and they have a hodge-
> podge of servers -- it's just a horrendously poor sign of configuration
> management.  Money is _never_ a factor, it's how you use it, and I've
> made do with far less than most.

More likely it is a sign of age and unwillingness to replace equipment
before it's useful life is over.

> Standardization is very key, even if it gets revised regularly or
> you even change vendors a couple of times.  There are ways to deal
> with those situations.

Even if you stay with the same vendor you usually can't buy the
same design with the same parts for more than a year.  Which means
that unless you buy them the day they come out, your next order
is likely to end up being something different.  Out of the
gazillion kinds of equipment out there you can come up with a
few in hindsight that have survived, but it's really a matter of
luck regarding what you bought and installed.

> > Having a spare card or two in a drawer is a good idea anyhow, if you
> > unexpectedly need to build the server overnight.

That's the real trick.  If you need something to work, keep a spare
yourself, preferably a whole box that you can swap the drives from
your production box into.

> While I understand the "risk" arguments made here, understand that
> over my past 5+ years of 3Ware deployments, my clients and I have
> undergone the _least_ risk thanx to 3Ware compared to other vendors
> and solutions.

5 years isn't really that long a time in terms of business data, and
I do recall seeing rumors in print a few years back that 3ware was
going to stop producing the ide raid cards.  They didn't and I'm not
sure why, or why it was rumored that they would, but it still works
out to a matter of luck every time you have to buy a replacement part
and it still happens to be available.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   lesmikesell at gmail.com