[CentOS] 4 X 500 gb drives - best software raid config for a backup server?

Ray Van Dolson rayvd at bludgeon.org
Wed Feb 18 20:22:45 UTC 2009


On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 11:51:55AM -0800, John R Pierce wrote:
> Ray Van Dolson wrote:
> > Can't Linux LVM do mirroring?  I swear I read that it could in the man
> > page.  Never have tried it however and you certainly can't set it up
> > from disk druid in anaconda.
> >   
> 
> 
> dunno.  the word 'mirror occurs exactly once in the man page for lvm(8)
> 
>         lvconvert -- Convert a logical volume from linear to mirror or 
> snapshot.
> 
> 
> the man page on lvconvert has more info, and this 
> http://www.centos.org/docs/5/html/5.2/Cluster_Logical_Volume_Manager/mirrored_volumes.html  
> certainly implies CentOS5 supports it.
> 
> glad to know thats finally there.  however, it doesn't seem to support 
> little things like hot spares or automatic rebuilding.   in fact, the 
> rebuild process looks involved and convoluted...   
> http://www.centos.org/docs/5/html/5.2/Cluster_Logical_Volume_Manager/mirrorrecover.html
> 

The other side of the coin (as I think you mentioned) is that many are
not comfortable having LVM handle the mirroring.  Are its mirroring
abilities as mature or fast as md?  It's certainly not documented as
well at the very least. :)

For now, I prefer doing my mirroring with md and the striping with LVM.
Would be interesting to hear anyone else's experiences with LVM
mirroring however.

Ray



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