This is getting OT and you are going to end up spending more on redundancy then if you just called Dell and ordered another computer.
----- Original Message ----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org centos-bounces@centos.org To: CentOS mailing list centos@centos.org Sent: Fri Mar 14 09:31:00 2008 Subject: RE: [CentOS] Recommendations for a “real RAID" 1 card on Centos box
That is true, buy high quality stuff up front for fewer problems down the road. Not a sure bet, but a better one. In the half dozen systems I've been running at home for the past several years none of them have suffered a hardware failure of any kind(fortunately). I've been running PC Power and Cooling power supplies for about 9 years now, really high quality PSUs(last one I bought was about 4 years ago, can't speak for their quality now).
So for a top quality power supply for a mission critical desktop machine, which brand(s) would you reccomend? One of the towers I have is a Thermaltake Xaser 3 with lots of room, and I just bought a new Antec Sonata III tower with a 500 watt PS.
So BBU is certainly a nice thing to have but at least in my experience isn't absolutely critical.
Then for a Mission critical desktop machine, if you had to make a choice, would you go with a good quality UPS and/or redundant power supplies, or a BBU instead?
Of course for absolutely critical things I don't use server-based RAID anyways. Multiple redundant controllers, multiple redundant paths(to both the disks and to the hosts), is the way to go(assuming your application(s) aren't built to be able to run on something like a distributed file system). I've seen that some of the latest HP servers have dual ported SAS disks, which sounds pretty neat. I assume they still only have one controller though.
As an alternative to RAID1 for a mission critical desktop machine @ home, what would you reccomend? Maybe a bare metal restore solution able to restore to different hardware, (i.e. if a motherboard dies and drive crashes due to power spike or some catastrophe, I'm screwed if I can't find the exact same make - model)?
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This is getting OT and you are going to end up spending more on redundancy then if you just called Dell and ordered another computer.
I agree with you in that it's cheaper to buy another home computer than to design a system with redundancy. However that new conputer I would order from Dell probabally would not have the redundancy I need in a a workstation, and I would just end up back where I started anyway. _________________________________________________________________ Helping your favorite cause is as easy as instant messaging. You IM, we give. http://im.live.com/Messenger/IM/Home/?source=text_hotmail_join
Therese Trudeau wrote:
This is getting OT and you are going to end up spending more on redundancy then if you just called Dell and ordered another computer.
I agree with you in that it's cheaper to buy another home computer than to design a system with redundancy. However that new conputer I would order from Dell probabally would not have the redundancy I need in a a workstation, and I would just end up back where I started anyway.
I think you missed my point. If workstation A fails, call Dell and have another one overnighted, or call Dell today and order a second workstation to have as a backup or act as a secondary workstation.
Their Vostros line is cheap (in appearance, components and price), but is functional, performs well and did I say cheap already, so you can get 2 for the price of 1 highly redundant system.
-Ross
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This is getting OT and you are going to end up spending more on redundancy then if you just called Dell and ordered another computer.
I agree with you in that it's cheaper to buy another home computer than to design a system with redundancy. However that new conputer I would order from Dell probabally would not have the redundancy I need in a a workstation, and I would just end up back where I started anyway.
I think you missed my point. If workstation A fails, call Dell and have another one overnighted, or call Dell today and order a second workstation to have as a backup or act as a secondary workstation.
Their Vostros line is cheap (in appearance, components and price), but is functional, performs well and did I say cheap already, so you can get 2 for the price of 1 highly redundant system.
Ah I got it now thanks.
Does the Vostros come with either a bare metal restore tape backup system or RAID ( which is required for my situation)? _________________________________________________________________ Climb to the top of the charts! Play the word scramble challenge with star power. http://club.live.com/star_shuffle.aspx?icid=starshuffle_wlmailtextlink_jan
Therese Trudeau wrote:
This is getting OT and you are going to end up spending more on redundancy then if you just called Dell and ordered another computer.
I agree with you in that it's cheaper to buy another home computer than to design a system with redundancy. However that new conputer I would order from Dell probabally would not have the redundancy I need in a a workstation, and I would just end up back where I started anyway.
I think you missed my point. If workstation A fails, call Dell and have another one overnighted, or call Dell today and order a second workstation to have as a backup or act as a secondary workstation.
Their Vostros line is cheap (in appearance, components and price), but is functional, performs well and did I say cheap already, so you can get 2 for the price of 1 highly redundant system.
Ah I got it now thanks.
Does the Vostros come with either a bare metal restore tape backup system or RAID ( which is required for my situation)?
They will sell you the moon if you want, but let me give you some practical advice. You seem like you are running your own consulting business, so this advice will not only save you time, but money which is key when running your own business.
Buy your computers with NO hardware RAID, your not setting up high performance database systems for hundreds of users here. Get systems with 2 identical internal 250GB SATA drives and setup software RAID1 on them. Get an external USB/Firewire drive, you can even get those in RAID1 too and have automated dump scripts backup your data to it.
Install your Linux distro with common reproduceable options using standard repos and document it.
Here's how I would setup the internal hard drives, can be done easily through anaconda even with kickstart.
/dev/sda1 - 100MB RAID /dev/sda2 - Rest of Disk RAID /dev/sdb1 - 100MB RAID /dev/sdb2 - Rest of Disk RAID
/dev/md0 - /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1 RAID1, ext3, /boot /dev/md1 - /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb2 RAID1, LVM
VG CentOS - PV /dev/md1
LV root - VG CentOS, 16GB, ext3, / LV swap - VG CentOS, 4GB, swap LV home - VG CentOS, 32GB, ext3, /home LV work - VG CentOS, 64GB, ext3, /work
If the system crashes you can move your USB drive over to the other system and restore there, and/or have rsync keep the other system identical to the first. Setup NIS/NFS or whatever to share the data/authentication information.
This setup will be more cost effective and faster then what you are currently planning.
-Ross
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Ross S. W. Walker -
Therese Trudeau