[CentOS] CentOS MD RAID 1 on Openfiler iSCSI

[Christopher Chan]

On Wednesday, June 30, 2010 10:53 AM, Emmanuel Noobadmin wrote:
> On 6/30/10, Christopher Chan<christopher.chan at bradbury.edu.hk>  wrote:
>> So cut appropriate corners to fit. Just not like Backblaze. Their's is
>> decidedly crap hobbled together.
>
> With the kind of budget I have to work with, things are already
> looking very rounded already.

That brings back memories...running dozens of PIII boxes to handle 200 
million email transactions and between 1 million to 4 million actual 
deliveries daily.


>
>>> I'm just thankful they paid for a Gigabit switch previously!
>
>> D-Link? :-D. I had to get D-Links when money was a bit tighter but now I
>> have HP Procurve 9210al switches.
>>
>> /me stomps on Cisco crap.
>
> D-Link had always been decent to me so that's what I usually go for if
> available. I've heard people mentioned the HP ProCurves for many years
> as really good stuff but I also thought Cisco was the industry
> standard?

The guys selling the HP Procurves were surprised that I could name the 
stuff. :-D

D-Links really depends I think. Them days when I was doing MTA admin, 
the network chum called the D-Links double dealing switches. But then, 
he had trouble with a leaky 3-com switch so in the end, it was rather 
hard to pin down a good maker.

One of my managers then called Cisco switches crapco switches. If you 
don't have a support contract, then they would probably be such. There 
are hundreds of firmware versions and running the latest is not always 
the solution if you are lucky enough to get problems. Nah, Cisco stuff 
are way too expensive compared to other stuff available. Even if I have 
to run a hyrid data/VoIP multi-vlan network, I wouldn't go Cisco.

/me prepares hydrogen bomb for HQ that more or less mandated a Cisco 
VoIP solution over asterisk + sip phones.


>
>>>> No, not putting Centos 5 on that. :-( Not trusting raid5/6.
>>>> raidz2/raidz3 it is going to be.
>>>
>>> Solaris?
>>
>> Either OpenSolaris or Nexenta. Hey, I thought we were supposed to be
>> running cheap aka freeloading?
>
> I am, not that I wouldn't prefer to make the client pay for things so
> that I can actually get somebody who knows the thing to config/fix it.
> So it's always good, at least IMO, to know what the paid options are
> if the clients ever cough up the budget for that.

:-D. I have contemplated getting the OpenSolaris support contract but it 
has apparently been axed along, it seems, with the OpenSolaris distro.


>
> But with the local SME mentality, cheap is usually the first thing
> they want to see until they learnt their lesson like losing data
> without RAID (it's amazing how many "servers" I come across without
> even RAID 1) or losing work without UPS.

Sounds exactly like the mentality in Hong Kong too. I mean, even the 
bigger companies with Asian managers have a similar mentality. The IT 
department is always the under-budgeted, under-manned and public enemy 
number one when cost-cutting.