[CentOS] backup server..

Thu Sep 14 12:04:21 UTC 2006
Brett Serkez <bserkez at gmail.com>

<snip>

> > I would highly advise simply paying the money for a RAID
> > Controller card to handle all of this for you. You mentioned
> > that you do not have physical access to the server, so the
> > Raid card can easily handle hdd failures and send you an email
> > letting you know that you need to replace the other drive.
>
> That's actually a very good point. The only thing is that the machine
> doesn't generate any revenue and so it'll heavlily depend on the price
> of the RAID controler really...

Run software RAID without a hardware controller.  I have running Linux
servers with identical hard drives using the kernel's software RAID
support on production servers.  Since you already have the two drives,
it is a no cost approach, simply configure the software RAID in disk
druid during install and off you go.  If you are concerned about
monitoring, write a cron job to check the contents of /proc/mdstat
periodically.

The only issue I've had is there is a known bug in the way that grub
installs its MBR (master boot record) so that if the primary drive
fails, the secondary drive has no way to boot.  The work around is to
run the normal install, then just at the end when you are are ready to
reboot, use the ATL-F? to switch to another session with the bash
prompt (I think F3 but I always have to hunt for it) .  Once in the
bash prompt, start grub and use the commands:  root (hd1,#) / setup(
hd1) were # is the partition containing the Linux boot loader.

This may take a little research and testing, but once you have it
down, it works well, even on low-end hardware.

Brett