[CentOS] [OT] Building a new backup server

[Les Mikesell]

On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 11:05 AM,  <m.roth at 5-cent.us> wrote:
>>
>> I was thrown a cheap OEM-server with a 120 GB SSD and 10 x 4 TB
> SATA-disks for the data-backup to build a backup server. It's built
> around an Asus
> Z87-A
>> that seems to have problems with anything Linux unfortunately.
>>
>> Anyway, BackupPC is my preferred backup-solution, so I went ahead to
> install another favourite, CentOS 6.4 - and failed.
>>
>> The raid controller is a Highpoint RocketRAID 2740 and its driver is
> suggested to be prior to starting Anaconda by way of "ctrl-alt-f2", at
> which point
>> Anaconda freezes.
>>
>> I've come so far as installing Fedora 19 and having it see all the
> hard-drives, but it refuses to create any partition bigger than approx.
> 16 TB with ext4.
>>
>> I've never had to deal with this big raid-arrays before and am a bit
> stumped.
>>
>> Any hints as to where to start reading up, as well as hints on how to
> proceed (another motherboard, ditto raidcontroller?), would be greatly
> appreciated.
>
> Several. First, see if you CentOS supports that card. The alternative is
> to go to Highpoint's website, and look for the driver. You *might* need to
> get the source and build it - I had to do that a few months ago, on an old
> 2260 (I think it is) card, and had to hack the source -they're *not* good
> about updates. If you're lucky, they'll have a current driver or source.
>
> Second, on our HBR's (that's a technical term - Honkin' Big RAIDS... <g>),
> we use ext4, and RAID 6. Also, for about two years, I keep finding things
> that say that although ext4 supports gigantic filesystems, the tools
> aren't there yet. The upshot is that I make several volumes and partition
> them into 14TB-16TB filesystems.

BackupPC pools data with hardlinks so you have to put its entire
archive in one filesystem.   However, unless you know for certain that
you'll need the entire space for backuppc I'd recommend breaking the
space up into sizes that your RAM will handle for an XFS fsck.  As
much as I like backuppc, there are some things it doesn't handle well
(VM images, huge databases or single-file mailboxes with daily
changes, etc.) and you might use the other portions for ad-hoc copies
of things like that.

> Besides, if you have a problem with a truly humongous RAID, the rebuild
> will finish sometime around next summer....

Yes, I'd probably use a RAID10 style RAID so it runs at full speed
even with a drive out of the array so you can put off the rebuild
until a weekend.   A rebuild will keep the heads too busy to do a lot
of other work while it is running.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
      lesmikesell at gmail.com