[CentOS] 4 X 500 gb drives - best software raid config for a backup server?

[Ian Forde]

On Sat, 2009-02-21 at 18:09 -0600, Les Mikesell wrote:
> Yes, but raid1 in software has none of those problems, since as far as 
> the boot loader is concerned, you are booting from a single drive.  And 
> there is a trade-off in complexity, since sw raid works the same on 
> Linux across different hardware and you need to round up different 
> vendors instructions and utilities for hardware raid - and have a backup 
> controller around for recovery.

RAID in software, whether RAID1 or RAID5/6, always has manual steps
involved in recovery.  If one is using standardized hardware, such as HP
DL-x80 hardware or Dell x950 boxes, HW RAID obviates the need for a
"recovery procedure".  It's just easier.  You can still boot from a
single drive, since that's what the bootloader sees.  There are no
vendor instructions or utilities needed for recovery.  Nor is there a
backup controller needed.  The *only* time I'd use software RAID on
Linux is if I didn't have a standard hardware base that supported
hotswap and commandless recovery, which in any enterprise within which I
were to be employed, I'd insist upon (and deploy)...

	-I