Therese,
You are definitely making your life more difficult then is needed for a desktop machine.
You said you have 4 hard disks. Make a software RAID1 out of the first two. Make a software RAID1 out of the second two and your good to go.
You can use dump/restore to backup the logical volumes on the second RAID set to an LV on the first.
No need for bare metal restore. Just need to get some working Linux distro to be able to read your files.
Going HW RAID for your desktop is going to get in the way of you getting things going and if your HW RAID card fails then what? Your drives will only work with another identical HW RAID card.
-Ross
----- Original Message ----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org centos-bounces@centos.org To: CentOS mailing list centos@centos.org Sent: Fri Mar 14 09:08:39 2008 Subject: RE: [CentOS] Recommendations for a “real RAID" 1 card on Centos box
You can turn on write back caching if you have a UPS as well (provided your UPS is wired into your system for a graceful shutdown)
Hopefully you have a redundant PS unit. Having a UPS is not going to help if your PS fails.
redundant power supplies connected to redundant UPS's. I've seen more UPS failures than I've ever had failed PSUs on proper server grade hardware.
This might be getting a bit elaborate for a desktop machine. I really want RAID because I'm tired every couple years of hard drive crashes and having to start from scratch and spending a week setting up new drives and getting my design software back on line and trying to recover data.
What do you think of alternative back up systems, such as a tape backup with bare metal restore software? I'd go that route instead if I could fine a solution which would allow me to restore to different hardware, i.e. if my motherboard dies and I need to buy a different brand or model MB. I know Storix back up software has this capability - I use storix on my Linux server with RAID 1. @ home I have one Linux and one Windows desktop machine.
_________________________________________________________________ Connect and share in new ways with Windows Live. http://www.windowslive.com/share.html?ocid=TXT_TAGHM_Wave2_sharelife_012008_... CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
______________________________________________________________________ This e-mail, and any attachments thereto, is intended only for use by the addressee(s) named herein and may contain legally privileged and/or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail, and any attachments thereto, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please immediately notify the sender and permanently delete the original and any copy or printout thereof.
You are definitely making your life more difficult then is needed for a desktop machine.
You said you have 4 hard disks. Make a software RAID1 out of the first two. Make a software RAID1 out of the second two and your good to go.
You can use dump/restore to backup the logical volumes on the second RAID set to an LV on the first.
No need for bare metal restore. Just need to get some working Linux distro to be able to read your files.
Going HW RAID for your desktop is going to get in the way of you getting things going and if your HW RAID card fails then what? Your drives will only work with another identical HW RAID card.
-Ross
That makes total sense Ross, I think I may end up going with software raid and investing in a good hot swap redundant power supply that would fit into an ATX case, combined with a good UPS.
That brings up a last question on possiblity of either a 3ware or acrea RAID 1 cards. I'm wondering how long I would be able to order a replacement RAID card from either of 3ware or areea. Anyone know if 3ware or acrea stock identical replacement cards for their SATA 4 port raid cards for several years out? Do they stock past the three year warranty period?
_________________________________________________________________ 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
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2008 10:33:29 -0400
You are definitely making your life more difficult then is needed for a desktop machine.
You said you have 4 hard disks. Make a software RAID1 out of the first two. Make a software RAID1 out of the second two and your good to go.
You can use dump/restore to backup the logical volumes on the second RAID set to an LV on the first.
No need for bare metal restore. Just need to get some working Linux distro to be able to read your files.
Going HW RAID for your desktop is going to get in the way of you getting things going and if your HW RAID card fails then what? Your drives will only work with another identical HW RAID card.
-Ross
That makes total sense Ross, I think I may end up going with software raid and investing in a good hot swap redundant power supply that would fit into an ATX case, combined with a good UPS.
That brings up a last question on possiblity of either a 3ware or acrea RAID 1 cards. I'm wondering how long I would be able to order a replacement RAID card from either of 3ware or areea. Anyone know if 3ware or acrea stock identical replacement cards for their SATA 4 port raid cards for several years out? Do they stock past the three year warranty period?
ACTUALLY I totally forgot. I absoluteluy can not use software raid. Because I use Adobe products. Adobe products do not install well on software raid systems, and tend to crash on software raid beacuse of their activation process. If I go raid, I absolutely need a hardware raid which is entirely transparent to the operating system, at least as far as adobe products are concerned. _________________________________________________________________ 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:
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2008 10:33:29 -0400
You are definitely making your life more difficult then is needed for a desktop machine.
You said you have 4 hard disks. Make a software RAID1 out of the first two. Make a software RAID1 out of the second two and your good to go.
You can use dump/restore to backup the logical volumes on the second RAID set to an LV on the first.
No need for bare metal restore. Just need to get some working Linux distro to be able to read your files.
Going HW RAID for your desktop is going to get in the way of you getting things going and if your HW RAID card fails then what? Your drives will only work with another identical HW RAID card.
-Ross
That makes total sense Ross, I think I may end up going with software raid and investing in a good hot swap redundant power supply that would fit into an ATX case, combined with a good UPS.
That brings up a last question on possiblity of either a 3ware or acrea RAID 1 cards. I'm wondering how long I would be able to order a replacement RAID card from either of 3ware or areea. Anyone know if 3ware or acrea stock identical replacement cards for their SATA 4 port raid cards for several years out? Do they stock past the three year warranty period?
ACTUALLY I totally forgot. I absoluteluy can not use software raid. Because I use Adobe products. Adobe products do not install well on software raid systems, and tend to crash on software raid beacuse of their activation process. If I go raid, I absolutely need a hardware raid which is entirely transparent to the operating system, at least as far as adobe products are concerned.
What Adobe products do you use under Linux? I did not know that Adobe offered products outside of Reader and Flash for Linux.
Besides, where did you read that Adobe products don't work on RAID systems?
The RAID part will be well hidden under the Logical Volume Manager even if the first is true.
RAID1 can speed up sequential read speed, as a well designed RAID implementation can stripe the read requests across both spindles (and dm-raid does that!).
-Ross
______________________________________________________________________ This e-mail, and any attachments thereto, is intended only for use by the addressee(s) named herein and may contain legally privileged and/or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail, and any attachments thereto, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please immediately notify the sender and permanently delete the original and any copy or printout thereof.
That brings up a last question on possiblity of either a 3ware or acrea RAID 1 cards. I'm wondering how long I would be able to order a replacement RAID card from either of 3ware or areea. Anyone know if 3ware or acrea stock identical replacement cards for their SATA 4 port raid cards for several years out? Do they stock past the three year warranty period?
ACTUALLY I totally forgot. I absoluteluy can not use software raid. Because I use Adobe products. Adobe products do not install well on software raid systems, and tend to crash on software raid beacuse of their activation process. If I go raid, I absolutely need a hardware raid which is entirely transparent to the operating system, at least as far as adobe products are concerned.
What Adobe products do you use under Linux? I did not know that Adobe offered products outside of Reader and Flash for Linux.
Besides, where did you read that Adobe products don't work on RAID systems?
The RAID part will be well hidden under the Logical Volume Manager even if the first is true.
RAID1 can speed up sequential read speed, as a well designed RAID implementation can stripe the read requests across both spindles (and dm-raid does that!).
Ah I figured someone would ask that. I use pretty much all major adobe products, Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, just about the entire suite.
I have two home workstation machines. One is Centos, and one is Windows (the one I use Adobe on). I'd prefer if possible to have the same type of RAID cards on both machines, because easier to manage and if I ever decide to sell or give away one machine, I can pull the raid card and use it as a backup.
From experience I have learned that Photoshop will not install on software raid on my W2K machine - I tried it
two years ago, could not get it to install, and after a few days trying to get it to work, called Adobe tech support and at that time the tech support person told me that their products don't run on software raid because they don't want people having multiple copies of one license on a second drive (unless it's for their second copy allowance for a laptop or second machine owned by same person, and only one or the other - the laptop or second desktop are run at the same time - my second copy is on a laptop ).
Also I may at some time migrate my adobe products to the Linux machine and run Adobe on WINE on the Linux box. Google just started working with the folks over @ WINE, and they want to make it so all adobe products run flawlessly on Linux - WINE, not just photoshop and illustrator. Today some adobe products run on wine well, some don't, in a few years they all will run well on a linux box using WINE. I'm not sure about running adobe using software raid on a linux box and WINE - never tried it, but going with hareware raid on the linux box eliminates another possible unknown. _________________________________________________________________ Connect and share in new ways with Windows Live. http://www.windowslive.com/share.html?ocid=TXT_TAGHM_Wave2_sharelife_012008
Therese Trudeau wrote:
I have two home workstation machines. One is Centos, and one is Windows (the one I use Adobe on). I'd prefer if possible to have the same type of RAID cards on both machines, because easier to manage and if I ever decide to sell or give away one machine, I can pull the raid card and use it as a backup.
I've always considered this a huge advantage of software raid1. Even if everything on a machine melts except for one drive, you can recover the data from it and you don't need a special controller to do it. On windows, you need the server versions to do mirroring, though.
If you can tolerate losing an hour's work or so, you could just schedule rsync commands to keep copies updated on another (perhaps external) drive or to another machine on the network - or get a Mac with it's 'time machine' backup. This approach is actually safer than RAID alone, since operator or software errors will wipe out your mirrored copy instantly as well with RAID.
I have two home workstation machines. One is Centos, and one is Windows (the one I use Adobe on). I'd prefer if possible to have the same type of RAID cards on both machines, because easier to manage and if I ever decide to sell or give away one machine, I can pull the raid card and use it as a backup.
I've always considered this a huge advantage of software raid1. Even if everything on a machine melts except for one drive, you can recover the data from it and you don't need a special controller to do it. On windows, you need the server versions to do mirroring, though.
If you can tolerate losing an hour's work or so, you could just schedule rsync commands to keep copies updated on another (perhaps external) drive or to another machine on the network - or get a Mac with it's 'time machine' backup. This approach is actually safer than RAID alone, since operator or software errors will wipe out your mirrored copy instantly as well with RAID.
Unfortunately I can't use software RAID1 because of this:
http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2008-March/096063.html _________________________________________________________________ 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:
I have two home workstation machines. One is Centos, and one is Windows (the one I use Adobe on). I'd prefer if possible to have the same type of RAID cards on both machines, because easier to manage and if I ever decide to sell or give away one machine, I can pull the raid card and use it as a backup.
I've always considered this a huge advantage of software raid1. Even if everything on a machine melts except for one drive, you can recover the data from it and you don't need a special controller to do it. On windows, you need the server versions to do mirroring, though.
If you can tolerate losing an hour's work or so, you could just schedule rsync commands to keep copies updated on another (perhaps external) drive or to another machine on the network - or get a Mac with it's 'time machine' backup. This approach is actually safer than RAID alone, since operator or software errors will wipe out your mirrored copy instantly as well with RAID.
Unfortunately I can't use software RAID1 because of this:
http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2008-March/096063.html
First, you should probably get your applications from a company that doesn't hate its customers... But aside from that, this restriction should only apply to the place where you install the app, not where you store your own work. Why don't you ghost-image (or use the free and very nice clonezilla-live) your system disk for a quick bare-metal restore, and put your own work on a separate raid-mirrored partition? And since you seem to be very paranoid about your disks, use some other backup mechanism like rsync to another location at some frequent intervals too.
Unfortunately I can't use software RAID1 because of this:
http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2008-March/096063.html
First, you should probably get your applications from a company that doesn't hate its customers... But aside from that, this restriction should only apply to the place where you install the app, not where you store your own work. Why don't you ghost-image (or use the free and very nice clonezilla-live) your system disk for a quick bare-metal restore, and put your own work on a separate raid-mirrored partition? And since you seem to be very paranoid about your disks, use some other backup mechanism like rsync to another location at some frequent intervals too.
Yeah I agree they are difficult to deal with sometimes. And expensive.
I agree the restriction should only apply to the place where I install the application. I told them that two years ago and they said that's the way their software is designed, to prevent installation if RAID 1 is detected, that's what the tech support guy told me anyway. They want to prevent someone from taking a mirrored drive and giving it to someone else to use on a different machine. They told me this two years ago not sure if they have the same policy though - but my version is about two years old.
I could clone just my data somehow on a seperate drive or backup (not the applications and OS), yet I also want to clone the entire OS and applications that's where most of the time goes into as far as restoring a disk or buying a new disk is concerned. I'm paranoid because I've had 3 crashes in the past 4 years and it's always a pain delays my work for days. SATA drives are made cheap compared to server grade SCSI's. _________________________________________________________________ Connect and share in new ways with Windows Live. http://www.windowslive.com/share.html?ocid=TXT_TAGHM_Wave2_sharelife_012008
Now, this is getting OT, but I like to rebuild my XP boxes about every 6 months. That's more than the 3 times in four years..... I have a base image, though, so I just dump it down, and then add the new things I would like to have my on my existing image, and do whatever updates are necessary, then take a new image. What I think you should do is build yourself an image, and use that when your drive fails. Install XP, install all your software. Export your MSOffice registration registry key. Do the updates, get it current. Then, before you do anything else, take an image of it. This is a base image with your software on it. Keep it until you get new hardware. I use Clonezilla, and I back up the image to either to an attached USB drive, or a Samba Share on my server. Takes about 20 minutes to do about 30G on an 80G drive. Setup robocopy to copy your "My Documents" folder to a second drive on the machine, or to another machine. I backup to a samba server as part of a logon script. I have a couple of machines that use a scheduled task. I do use the /mir option, so if I hose something, it's my fault. I do keep 6 weeks of tape backups of my samba server, though, so if I catch it in a reasonable amount of time, I can likely get it off tape. Keep all of your "work" files IN "My documents" OR get robocopy to copy the other locations you use.
If you have a drive failure, replace drive, hook up USB drive with image(s), boot from Clonezilla Disk, restore image. the Same 30G image take about 10 minutes to dump back down. these are Dell GX520's. Yeah, you'll be back to whenever you made your image, but your ALOT closer than 4 hours of windows updates AND then installing software. Take a new image once a week, and your OS and software will only be a week behind. Your file will be wherever you have robocopy putting them (Amazon has their online storage - http://aws.amazon.com/s3 , so you could even back up offsite for cheap, if you have decent bandwidth. All this work is pointless, if your place of business burns down. If you are running a business, you NEED to get your data offsite.)
Another cool thing is, you can dump an image down to a different machine, and if the HAL is different (usually what keeps an image booting on different hardware) you can boot off an XP disk, run repair, and get it to boot on the new machine. It would be best to have an XP disk with SP2 already on it. (or slipstream your own..) Finally, buy server grade SATA disks. Yeah, I know it's not the same as SCSI, but there are
-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of Therese Trudeau Sent: Friday, March 14, 2008 10:03 AM To: CentOS mailing list Subject: RE: [CentOS] Recommendations for a "real RAID" 1 card on Centos box
Unfortunately I can't use software RAID1 because of this:
http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2008-March/096063.html
First, you should probably get your applications from a company that doesn't hate its customers... But aside from that, this restriction should only apply to the place where you install the app, not where you store your own work. Why don't you ghost-image (or use the free and very nice clonezilla-live) your system disk for a quick bare-metal restore, and put your own work on a separate raid-mirrored partition? And since you seem to be very paranoid about your disks, use some other backup mechanism like rsync to another location at some frequent intervals too.
Yeah I agree they are difficult to deal with sometimes. And expensive.
I agree the restriction should only apply to the place where I install the application. I told them that two years ago and they said that's the way their software is designed, to prevent installation if RAID 1 is detected, that's what the tech support guy told me anyway. They want to prevent someone from taking a mirrored drive and giving it to someone else to use on a different machine. They told me this two years ago not sure if they have the same policy though - but my version is about two years old.
I could clone just my data somehow on a seperate drive or backup (not the applications and OS), yet I also want to clone the entire OS and applications that's where most of the time goes into as far as restoring a disk or buying a new disk is concerned. I'm paranoid because I've had 3 crashes in the past 4 years and it's always a pain delays my work for days. SATA drives are made cheap compared to server grade SCSI's. _________________________________________________________________ Connect and share in new ways with Windows Live. http://www.windowslive.com/share.html?ocid=TXT_TAGHM_Wave2_sharelife_012008_ ______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
on 3-14-2008 8:22 AM Therese Trudeau spake the following:
That brings up a last question on possiblity of either a 3ware or acrea RAID 1 cards. I'm wondering how long I would be able to order a replacement RAID card from either of 3ware or areea. Anyone know if 3ware or acrea stock identical replacement cards for their SATA 4 port raid cards for several years out? Do they stock past the three year warranty period?
ACTUALLY I totally forgot. I absoluteluy can not use software raid. Because I use Adobe products. Adobe products do not install well on software raid systems, and tend to crash on software raid beacuse of their activation process. If I go raid, I absolutely need a hardware raid which is entirely transparent to the operating system, at least as far as adobe products are concerned.
What Adobe products do you use under Linux? I did not know that Adobe offered products outside of Reader and Flash for Linux.
Besides, where did you read that Adobe products don't work on RAID systems?
The RAID part will be well hidden under the Logical Volume Manager even if the first is true.
RAID1 can speed up sequential read speed, as a well designed RAID implementation can stripe the read requests across both spindles (and dm-raid does that!).
Ah I figured someone would ask that. I use pretty much all major adobe products, Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, just about the entire suite.
I have two home workstation machines. One is Centos, and one is Windows (the one I use Adobe on). I'd prefer if possible to have the same type of RAID cards on both machines, because easier to manage and if I ever decide to sell or give away one machine, I can pull the raid card and use it as a backup.
From experience I have learned that Photoshop will not install on software raid on my W2K machine - I tried it
two years ago, could not get it to install, and after a few days trying to get it to work, called Adobe tech support and at that time the tech support person told me that their products don't run on software raid because they don't want people having multiple copies of one license on a second drive (unless it's for their second copy allowance for a laptop or second machine owned by same person, and only one or the other - the laptop or second desktop are run at the same time - my second copy is on a laptop ).
Also I may at some time migrate my adobe products to the Linux machine and run Adobe on WINE on the Linux box. Google just started working with the folks over @ WINE, and they want to make it so all adobe products run flawlessly on Linux - WINE, not just photoshop and illustrator. Today some adobe products run on wine well, some don't, in a few years they all will run well on a linux box using WINE. I'm not sure about running adobe using software raid on a linux box and WINE - never tried it, but going with hareware raid on the linux box eliminates another possible unknown. _________________________________________________________________
The software raid implementation in windows is a far cry from the linux version. Windows can't boot from their "dynamic" arrays, linux can. And the raid in linux is more transparent to the software, as the linux raid is just another device as far as the software is concerned. The kernel keeps full isolation and control. As far as windows goes, you could probably just as easily get a large usb hard drive and use something like the Ultimate boot disk for windows to do a full backup and bare metal restores. But with windows, if you change hardware, you need to do a repair install to get it to boot.
Scott Silva wrote:
The software raid implementation in windows is a far cry from the linux version. Windows can't boot from their "dynamic" arrays, linux can.
When did that start - or are you just looking at the non-server versions? I don't have it around now, but I'm fairly sure I was able to take a windows 2000 server and have it clone itself to a VMware appliance setup that first exported an iscsi partition, then after the software mirroring completed, booted from it. And unlike linux, the windows version was able to convert a running non-mirrored partition into a dynamic disk, and then mirror it.
And the raid in linux is more transparent to the software, as the linux raid is just another device as far as the software is concerned. The kernel keeps full isolation and control.
I don't remember seeing anything change after the disk conversion in windows.
Therese Trudeau wrote:
That brings up a last question on possiblity of either a 3ware or acrea RAID 1 cards. I'm wondering how long I would be able to order a replacement RAID card from either of 3ware or areea. Anyone know if 3ware or acrea stock identical replacement cards for their SATA 4 port raid cards for several years out? Do they stock past the three year warranty period?
ACTUALLY I totally forgot. I absoluteluy can not use software raid. Because I use Adobe products. Adobe products do not install well on software raid systems, and tend to crash on software raid beacuse of their activation process. If I go raid, I absolutely need a hardware raid which is entirely transparent to the operating system, at least as far as adobe products are concerned.
What Adobe products do you use under Linux? I did not know that Adobe offered products outside of Reader and Flash for Linux.
Besides, where did you read that Adobe products don't work on RAID systems?
The RAID part will be well hidden under the Logical Volume Manager even if the first is true.
RAID1 can speed up sequential read speed, as a well designed RAID implementation can stripe the read requests across both spindles (and dm-raid does that!).
Ah I figured someone would ask that. I use pretty much all major adobe products, Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, just about the entire suite.
I have two home workstation machines. One is Centos, and one is Windows (the one I use Adobe on). I'd prefer if possible to have the same type of RAID cards on both machines, because easier to manage and if I ever decide to sell or give away one machine, I can pull the raid card and use it as a backup.
If you are a graphic designer, I'm curious what you use the CentOS box for (or why you use Windows and not Mac :-)
From experience I have learned that Photoshop will not install on software raid on my W2K machine - I tried it two years ago, could not get it to install, and after a few days trying to get it to work, called Adobe tech support and at that time the tech support person told me that their products don't run on software raid because they don't want people having multiple copies of one license on a second drive (unless it's for their second copy allowance for a laptop or second machine owned by same person, and only one or the other - the laptop or second desktop are run at the same time - my second copy is on a laptop ).
The Photoshop support tech was just shrugging you off here because he didn't want to support you. There exists no such stipulation in Adobe's EULA. As long as it is running on the machine it was licensed for and that machine's OS is supported then you are good. Running on RAID has nothing to do with second copies and second machine allowance as the storage medium is not the key in licensing, the processor(s) are. Adobe needn't even be installed on the local HD if you can get away with a network install and all that registry crap, but it better have a license for the CPU it's running on.
I had run Adobe Photoshop on Windows 2000 Terminal Server running under software RAID with no problems (besides poor visual performance due to terminal services).
Also I may at some time migrate my adobe products to the Linux machine and run Adobe on WINE on the Linux box. Google just started working with the folks over @ WINE, and they want to make it so all adobe products run flawlessly on Linux - WINE, not just photoshop and illustrator. Today some adobe products run on wine well, some don't, in a few years they all will run well on a linux box using WINE. I'm not sure about running adobe using software raid on a linux box and WINE - never tried it, but going with hareware raid on the linux box eliminates another possible unknown.
Don't bother. If you are a serious Adobe designer get yourself a Mac and dual boot it between OS X and CentOS or triple with Windows.
-Ross
______________________________________________________________________ This e-mail, and any attachments thereto, is intended only for use by the addressee(s) named herein and may contain legally privileged and/or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail, and any attachments thereto, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please immediately notify the sender and permanently delete the original and any copy or printout thereof.
Ross S. W. Walker wrote:
Don't bother. If you are a serious Adobe designer get yourself a Mac and dual boot it between OS X and CentOS or triple with Windows.
Or use parallels or vmware and run all 3 at once when you want... and let the built in time machine tool do backups to an external firewire or network drive.
Les Mikesell wrote:
Ross S. W. Walker wrote:
Don't bother. If you are a serious Adobe designer get yourself a Mac and dual boot it between OS X and CentOS or triple with Windows.
Or use parallels or vmware and run all 3 at once when you want... and let the built in time machine tool do backups to an external firewire or network drive.
Yes, even better. I think VMware sells a version of workstation for OS X now too.
-Ross
______________________________________________________________________ This e-mail, and any attachments thereto, is intended only for use by the addressee(s) named herein and may contain legally privileged and/or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail, and any attachments thereto, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please immediately notify the sender and permanently delete the original and any copy or printout thereof.
Ross S. W. Walker wrote:
Les Mikesell wrote:
Ross S. W. Walker wrote:
Don't bother. If you are a serious Adobe designer get yourself a Mac and dual boot it between OS X and CentOS or triple with Windows.
Or use parallels or vmware and run all 3 at once when you want... and let the built in time machine tool do backups to an external firewire or network drive.
Yes, even better. I think VMware sells a version of workstation for OS X now too.
Yes, and I think it will run VM's created under VMware server on linux or windows, although you may not be able to move them the other direction with some of the options you can use on the mac or windows workstation versions.
Don't bother. If you are a serious Adobe designer get yourself a Mac and dual boot it between OS X and CentOS or triple with Windows.
Or use parallels or vmware and run all 3 at once when you want... and let the built in time machine tool do backups to an external firewire or network drive.
Yes, even better. I think VMware sells a version of workstation for OS X now too.
Yes, and I think it will run VM's created under VMware server on linux or windows, although you may not be able to move them the other direction with some of the options you can use on the mac or windows workstation versions.
I just called VMWare and the guy said that for what I wanted to do, a bare metal restore solution, that I would be better served by going with either hardware or software raid maybe combined with something like a tape backup solution, and that their desktop / workstation applications are not suited as a complete backup - bare metal restore solution. He said their system was mainly for taking system snapshots for development purposes. _________________________________________________________________ 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:
Don't bother. If you are a serious Adobe designer get yourself a Mac and dual boot it between OS X and CentOS or triple with Windows.
Or use parallels or vmware and run all 3 at once when you want... and let the built in time machine tool do backups to an external firewire or network drive.
Yes, even better. I think VMware sells a version of workstation for OS X now too.
Yes, and I think it will run VM's created under VMware server on linux or windows, although you may not be able to move them the other direction with some of the options you can use on the mac or windows workstation versions.
I just called VMWare and the guy said that for what I wanted to do, a bare metal restore solution, that I would be better served by going with either hardware or software raid maybe combined with something like a tape backup solution, and that their desktop / workstation applications are not suited as a complete backup - bare metal restore solution. He said their system was mainly for taking system snapshots for development purposes.
The "bare metal" restore most companies tote is not as seamless as they lead to believe and often requires to be run on a "Server" version of Windows.
I would follow Les' advice and use an imager program like clonezilla or Ghost and make a quarterly image and put it to an external HD and have a bootable USB memory stick or live CD with the software on it to restore the image if necessary.
Ok for now, just get the cheap 3ware card you were planning as long as it'll be supported in the future. Get an external HD and download one of the free cloning packages live CDs. Clone your hardware mirrored setup to the external HD. Have the OS backup software perform nightly backups to the external HD.
Then you have some hardware fault tolerance, and backups, as well as an image of your HD just in case and all for a lot cheaper then when you were talking complete redundancy.
If your computer blows up, you can have another computer available, wait you do, your CentOS box...
-Ross
______________________________________________________________________ This e-mail, and any attachments thereto, is intended only for use by the addressee(s) named herein and may contain legally privileged and/or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail, and any attachments thereto, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please immediately notify the sender and permanently delete the original and any copy or printout thereof.
Therese Trudeau wrote:
Don't bother. If you are a serious Adobe designer get yourself a Mac and dual boot it between OS X and CentOS or triple with Windows.
Or use parallels or vmware and run all 3 at once when you want... and let the built in time machine tool do backups to an external firewire or network drive.
Yes, even better. I think VMware sells a version of workstation for OS X now too.
Yes, and I think it will run VM's created under VMware server on linux or windows, although you may not be able to move them the other direction with some of the options you can use on the mac or windows workstation versions.
I just called VMWare and the guy said that for what I wanted to do, a bare metal restore solution, that I would be better served by going with either hardware or software raid maybe combined with something like a tape backup solution, and that their desktop / workstation applications are not suited as a complete backup - bare metal restore solution. He said their system was mainly for taking system snapshots for development purposes.
I didn't mean to always run under VMware. What you would want to do is get your main application(s) working natively for best performance, then use VMware for whatever else you might need that would otherwise need a separate machine/OS. When you switch to Linux or a Mac, you often have a few Windows programs that you may not use often but you can't duplicate (the netflix online movie viewer, for example...). Running windows under vmware means you don't have to keep a separate box around for these. Then backups of the main system will automatically include these without extra trouble too.
Ah I figured someone would ask that. I use pretty much all major adobe products, Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, just about the entire suite.
I have two home workstation machines. One is Centos, and one is Windows (the one I use Adobe on). I'd prefer if possible to have the same type of RAID cards on both machines, because easier to manage and if I ever decide to sell or give away one machine, I can pull the raid card and use it as a backup.
If you are a graphic designer, I'm curious what you use the CentOS box for (or why you use Windows and not Mac :-)
Good question when I started out I had windows so that's what I bought - Adobe windows versions. I'm considering migrating to Mac though because Adobe just started a new program where one can migrate to mac versions without paying full price for a new version - they used to charge full price for upgrades if one wanted to switch from Windows to mac. Now they just cancel out the windows version if one migrates to Mac.
From experience I have learned that Photoshop will not install on software raid on my W2K machine - I tried it two years ago, could not get it to install, and after a few days trying to get it to work, called Adobe tech support and at that time the tech support person told me that their products don't run on software raid because they don't want people having multiple copies of one license on a second drive (unless it's for their second copy allowance for a laptop or second machine owned by same person, and only one or the other - the laptop or second desktop are run at the same time - my second copy is on a laptop ).
The Photoshop support tech was just shrugging you off here because he didn't want to support you. There exists no such stipulation in Adobe's EULA. As long as it is running on the machine it was licensed for and that machine's OS is supported then you are good. Running on RAID has nothing to do with second copies and second machine allowance as the storage medium is not the key in licensing, the processor(s) are. Adobe needn't even be installed on the local HD if you can get away with a network install and all that registry crap, but it better have a license for the CPU it's running on.
Just spoke with Adobe sales today checking into upgrade pricing. The sales guy said that the latest versions of all Adobe products would not install on software RAID systems, BUT he did say, if I bought a hardware raid system, then I would have no problem installing it because the OS and Adobe products do not see hardware raid. It may state in their EULA that there is no restriction running either software or hardware raid, but I have to go by what the sales department tells me. It's rediculous I know.
I had run Adobe Photoshop on Windows 2000 Terminal Server running under software RAID with no problems (besides poor visual performance due to terminal services).
That's great wish I could have gotten my apps to install a few years ago - at the time I tried doing it with the Adaptec 2120SA raid card which uses software raid drivers. It's a far cry from the 3ware true raid, yet I don't want to take the chance, set up true software raid, load my adobe products on disk and them find two or three years from now if I upgrade with a new version, that adobe has found a way to disable software raid compatability for all scenairos.
Just curious, what version of photoshop were you using under your software raid setup? I tried it with Creative Suite 2 which includes photoshop.
Also I may at some time migrate my adobe products to the Linux machine and run Adobe on WINE on the Linux box. Google just started working with the folks over @ WINE, and they want to make it so all adobe products run flawlessly on Linux - WINE, not just photoshop and illustrator. Today some adobe products run on wine well, some don't, in a few years they all will run well on a linux box using WINE. I'm not sure about running adobe using software raid on a linux box and WINE - never tried it, but going with hareware raid on the linux box eliminates another possible unknown.
Don't bother. If you are a serious Adobe designer get yourself a Mac and dual boot it between OS X and CentOS or triple with Windows.
Yes I think I will migrate over to mac instead of running adobe on wine, when I get the upgrade, makes much more sense. And set up a hardware RAID 1 on the new desktop mac. _________________________________________________________________ Connect and share in new ways with Windows Live. http://www.windowslive.com/share.html?ocid=TXT_TAGHM_Wave2_sharelife_012008
Therese Trudeau wrote:
Ah I figured someone would ask that. I use pretty much all major adobe products, Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, just about the entire suite.
I have two home workstation machines. One is Centos, and one is Windows (the one I use Adobe on). I'd prefer if possible to have the same type of RAID cards on both machines, because easier to manage and if I ever decide to sell or give away one machine, I can pull the raid card and use it as a backup.
If you are a graphic designer, I'm curious what you use the CentOS box for (or why you use Windows and not Mac :-)
Good question when I started out I had windows so that's what I bought - Adobe windows versions. I'm considering migrating to Mac though because Adobe just started a new program where one can migrate to mac versions without paying full price for a new version - they used to charge full price for upgrades if one wanted to switch from Windows to mac. Now they just cancel out the windows version if one migrates to Mac.
I noticed you forgot to answer my question, but good to know Adobe has a trade-up program now ;-)
From experience I have learned that Photoshop will not install on software raid on my W2K machine - I tried it two years ago, could not get it to install, and after a few days trying to get it to work, called Adobe tech support and at that time the tech support person told me that their products don't run on software raid because they don't want people having multiple copies of one license on a second drive (unless it's for their second copy allowance for a laptop or second machine owned by same person, and only one or the other - the laptop or second desktop are run at the same time - my second copy is on a laptop ).
The Photoshop support tech was just shrugging you off here because he didn't want to support you. There exists no such stipulation in Adobe's EULA. As long as it is running on the machine it was licensed for and that machine's OS is supported then you are good. Running on RAID has nothing to do with second copies and second machine allowance as the storage medium is not the key in licensing, the processor(s) are. Adobe needn't even be installed on the local HD if you can get away with a network install and all that registry crap, but it better have a license for the CPU it's running on.
Just spoke with Adobe sales today checking into upgrade pricing. The sales guy said that the latest versions of all Adobe products would not install on software RAID systems, BUT he did say, if I bought a hardware raid system, then I would have no problem installing it because the OS and Adobe products do not see hardware raid. It may state in their EULA that there is no restriction running either software or hardware raid, but I have to go by what the sales department tells me. It's rediculous I know.
I actually googled a knowledge base article where the problem turns out to be with the serial number generation on Adobe products where it gets "confused" as to which drive is your primary drive with certain third party software RAID systems.
There is some cludgy work-around for it from support, but they recommend avoiding these systems.
I had run Adobe Photoshop on Windows 2000 Terminal Server running under software RAID with no problems (besides poor visual performance due to terminal services).
That's great wish I could have gotten my apps to install a few years ago - at the time I tried doing it with the Adaptec 2120SA raid card which uses software raid drivers. It's a far cry from the 3ware true raid, yet I don't want to take the chance, set up true software raid, load my adobe products on disk and them find two or three years from now if I upgrade with a new version, that adobe has found a way to disable software raid compatability for all scenairos.
Just curious, what version of photoshop were you using under your software raid setup? I tried it with Creative Suite 2 which includes photoshop.
At the time, say around 2002-3, I want to say Photoshop CS, yes, but just Photoshop not the whole suite.
The RAID was on Windows Server 2000, so it was just the builtin Windows Server software RAID. Maybe there wasn't a problem with that RAID implementation as it was part of the OS.
Also I may at some time migrate my adobe products to the Linux machine and run Adobe on WINE on the Linux box. Google just started working with the folks over @ WINE, and they want to make it so all adobe products run flawlessly on Linux - WINE, not just photoshop and illustrator. Today some adobe products run on wine well, some don't, in a few years they all will run well on a linux box using WINE. I'm not sure about running adobe using software raid on a linux box and WINE - never tried it, but going with hareware raid on the linux box eliminates another possible unknown.
Don't bother. If you are a serious Adobe designer get yourself a Mac and dual boot it between OS X and CentOS or triple with Windows.
Yes I think I will migrate over to mac instead of running adobe on wine, when I get the upgrade, makes much more sense. And set up a hardware RAID 1 on the new desktop mac.
Definitely better. Otherwise if you did want to use wine, go out and buy Crossover Office as it will make it much much less painful, but I don't know if they support the latest CS2 versions, I think they still support just the CS versions.
Or there's Xen, but there is no good way to reliably display such high graphic imagery from a Xen host. SDL, VNC or RDP are just not high-performance enough.
-Ross
______________________________________________________________________ This e-mail, and any attachments thereto, is intended only for use by the addressee(s) named herein and may contain legally privileged and/or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail, and any attachments thereto, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please immediately notify the sender and permanently delete the original and any copy or printout thereof.
If you are a graphic designer, I'm curious what you use the CentOS box for (or why you use Windows and not Mac :-)
Good question when I started out I had windows so that's what I bought - Adobe windows versions. I'm considering migrating to Mac though because Adobe just started a new program where one can migrate to mac versions without paying full price for a new version - they used to charge full price for upgrades if one wanted to switch from Windows to mac. Now they just cancel out the windows version if one migrates to Mac.
I noticed you forgot to answer my question, but good to know Adobe has a trade-up program now ;-)
OH yes did not read it all the way.
To answer your question, I also use a Linux server for hosting sites I design for, it was just upgraded to Centos from an old version of RH, and for several reasons I set up the centos box @ home.
I wanted to get up to speed quicker on Centos 5 and thought this would help. Plus I feel that it is more secure to use my linux machine at home to both surf the net and upload files to server, more secure for email, etc. I plan on using the Windows machine only for graphic design and not browse with it, & use the linux box for surfing. And experiment with some of the Linux graphic design applications to see if they measure up to adobe - maybe some day I could dump adobe all together. _________________________________________________________________ Need to know the score, the latest news, or you need your Hotmail®-get your "fix". http://www.msnmobilefix.com/Default.aspx
Therese Trudeau wrote:
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2008 10:33:29 -0400
ACTUALLY I totally forgot. I absoluteluy can not use software raid. Because I use Adobe products. Adobe products do not install well on software raid systems, and tend to crash on software raid beacuse of their activation process. If I go raid, I absolutely need a hardware raid which is entirely transparent to the operating system, at least as far as adobe products are concerned.
The stuff I found about that issue seemed to be on Windows. Are you dual booting this box?
ACTUALLY I totally forgot. I absoluteluy can not use software raid. Because I use Adobe products. Adobe products do not install well on software raid systems, and tend to crash on software raid beacuse of their activation process. If I go raid, I absolutely need a hardware raid which is entirely transparent to the operating system, at least as far as adobe products are concerned.
The stuff I found about that issue seemed to be on Windows. Are you dual booting this box?
No, read this: http://by114w.bay114.mail.live.com/mail/ReadMessageLight.aspx?Aux=14%7c0%7c8...
my previous thread...
_________________________________________________________________ Shed those extra pounds with MSN and The Biggest Loser! http://biggestloser.msn.com/
Therese Trudeau wrote:
ACTUALLY I totally forgot. I absoluteluy can not use software raid. Because I use Adobe products. Adobe products do not install well on software raid systems, and tend to crash on software raid beacuse of their activation process. If I go raid, I absolutely need a hardware raid which is entirely transparent to the operating system, at least as far as adobe products are concerned.
The stuff I found about that issue seemed to be on Windows. Are you dual booting this box?
No, read this: http://by114w.bay114.mail.live.com/mail/ReadMessageLight.aspx?Aux=14%7c0%7c8...
my previous thread...
Sorry, I can't access your Windows Live Hotmail inbox . . .
No, read this:
my previous thread...
Sorry, I can't access your Windows Live Hotmail inbox . . .
Ah haha sorry was not paying attention, it's here: :)
http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2008-March/096054.html _________________________________________________________________ Need to know the score, the latest news, or you need your Hotmail®-get your "fix". http://www.msnmobilefix.com/Default.aspx
Sorry, I can't access your Windows Live Hotmail inbox . . .
Ah haha sorry was not paying attention, it's here: :)
http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2008-March/096054.html
OOPS - I need some more coffee this am - HERE is the correct thread:
http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2008-March/096063.html _________________________________________________________________ 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:
You are definitely making your life more difficult then is needed for a desktop machine.
You said you have 4 hard disks. Make a software RAID1 out of the first two. Make a software RAID1 out of the second two and your good to go.
You can use dump/restore to backup the logical volumes on the second RAID set to an LV on the first.
No need for bare metal restore. Just need to get some working Linux distro to be able to read your files.
Going HW RAID for your desktop is going to get in the way of you getting things going and if your HW RAID card fails then what? Your drives will only work with another identical HW RAID card.
-Ross
That makes total sense Ross, I think I may end up going with software raid and investing in a good hot swap redundant power supply that would fit into an ATX case, combined with a good UPS.
That brings up a last question on possiblity of either a 3ware or acrea RAID 1 cards. I'm wondering how long I would be able to order a replacement RAID card from either of 3ware or areea. Anyone know if 3ware or acrea stock identical replacement cards for their SATA 4 port raid cards for several years out? Do they stock past the three year warranty period?
The problem with this is if you buy the previous generation card because it's cheap and vendors stop selling it then you may be SOL.
-Ross
______________________________________________________________________ This e-mail, and any attachments thereto, is intended only for use by the addressee(s) named herein and may contain legally privileged and/or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail, and any attachments thereto, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please immediately notify the sender and permanently delete the original and any copy or printout thereof.
You are definitely making your life more difficult then is needed for a desktop machine.
You said you have 4 hard disks. Make a software RAID1 out of the first two. Make a software RAID1 out of the second two and your good to go.
You can use dump/restore to backup the logical volumes on the second RAID set to an LV on the first.
No need for bare metal restore. Just need to get some working Linux distro to be able to read your files.
Going HW RAID for your desktop is going to get in the way of you getting things going and if your HW RAID card fails then what? Your drives will only work with another identical HW RAID card.
-Ross
That makes total sense Ross, I think I may end up going with software raid and investing in a good hot swap redundant power supply that would fit into an ATX case, combined with a good UPS.
That brings up a last question on possiblity of either a 3ware or acrea RAID 1 cards. I'm wondering how long I would be able to order a replacement RAID card from either of 3ware or areea. Anyone know if 3ware or acrea stock identical replacement cards for their SATA 4 port raid cards for several years out? Do they stock past the three year warranty period?
The problem with this is if you buy the previous generation card because it's cheap and vendors stop selling it then you may be SOL.
OK I guess I have a solution now, I just called 3ware and spoke with sales.
On the 9650 se 4 port SATA cards, even if the card fails, they say that I could use a different model card from them if the old card is dis continued; because if the original fails, they designed it such that I could replace it with a different card. I could even migrate a drive to a different motherboard- and still read one of the mirrored drives.
For the 8006 series card, this is not the case, I would have to buy the same model card, however I would be covered for at least four years, because this card is still in production and probabally will be for another year, and with the three year warranty I would be covered for at least four years from purchase time if the card dies and I need a new one.
I need one of each card, a PCIe and an older design PCI. _________________________________________________________________ Connect and share in new ways with Windows Live. http://www.windowslive.com/share.html?ocid=TXT_TAGHM_Wave2_sharelife_012008
on 3-14-2008 7:33 AM Therese Trudeau spake the following:
You are definitely making your life more difficult then is needed for a desktop machine.
You said you have 4 hard disks. Make a software RAID1 out of the first two. Make a software RAID1 out of the second two and your good to go.
You can use dump/restore to backup the logical volumes on the second RAID set to an LV on the first.
No need for bare metal restore. Just need to get some working Linux distro to be able to read your files.
Going HW RAID for your desktop is going to get in the way of you getting things going and if your HW RAID card fails then what? Your drives will only work with another identical HW RAID card.
-Ross
That makes total sense Ross, I think I may end up going with software raid and investing in a good hot swap redundant power supply that would fit into an ATX case, combined with a good UPS.
That brings up a last question on possiblity of either a 3ware or acrea RAID 1 cards. I'm wondering how long I would be able to order a replacement RAID card from either of 3ware or areea. Anyone know if 3ware or acrea stock identical replacement cards for their SATA 4 port raid cards for several years out? Do they stock past the three year warranty period?
AFAIR (at least with 3ware) the newer cards will usually still support the older arrays.
You are definitely making your life more difficult then is needed for a desktop machine.
You said you have 4 hard disks. Make a software RAID1 out of the first two. Make a software RAID1 out of the second two and your good to go.
You can use dump/restore to backup the logical volumes on the second RAID set to an LV on the first.
No need for bare metal restore. Just need to get some working Linux distro to be able to read your files.
Going HW RAID for your desktop is going to get in the way of you getting things going and if your HW RAID card fails then what? Your drives will only work with another identical HW RAID card.
-Ross
That makes total sense Ross, I think I may end up going with software raid and investing in a good hot swap redundant power supply that would fit into an ATX case, combined with a good UPS.
That brings up a last question on possiblity of either a 3ware or acrea RAID 1 cards. I'm wondering how long I would be able to order a replacement RAID card from either of 3ware or areea. Anyone know if 3ware or acrea stock identical replacement cards for their SATA 4 port raid cards for several years out? Do they stock past the three year warranty period?
AFAIR (at least with 3ware) the newer cards will usually still support the older arrays.
Yeah, check out this thread...
http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2008-March/096073.html _________________________________________________________________ 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
-
Dennis McLeod -
Les Mikesell -
Ross S. W. Walker -
Scott Silva -
Therese Trudeau -
Toby Bluhm