[CentOS] Some basic LVM questions

Sun Nov 8 22:13:17 UTC 2009
Monte Milanuk <memilanuk at gmail.com>

M. Hamzah Khan wrote:
> On Sun, 2009-11-08 at 10:44 -0800, Monte Milanuk wrote:
>
> What I think most people do (and what I am doing now), is to setup
> RAID-1 or so behind the volume group. This way you will still be safe if
> one of the drives fail. Keep in mind that RAID is not a backup solution,
> and you should still create regular backups. :)
>   

In practical terms, it may all be a moot point.  I'm not too sure how 
much more I can jam in that mini-tower case without other problems, and 
(hopefully) 500GB should be enough storage for now; intended usage is 
just backing up users home directories from a few PCs & laptops in the 
house.  If I truly intend to implement LVM + RAID it may have to be in a 
newer dedicated setup.  I think for the time being though, I will look 
at removing the 500gb drive from the first volume group and creating a 
second one with just it in there.  Who knows, I might get brave and 
start mucking about w/ software raid and see what I can put together ;)

I know everyone says RAID is not substitute for a proper backup 
solution... but this machine *is* the backup for the rest of the 
network.  At what point should one draw the line for backing up?  What 
is there out there that is still reasonably economical for backing up 
say, a RAID 1 setup of two 1TB drives, or a RAID 5 setup of three drives 
that size?  Tape?  Looks to be just about out-stripped in size by cheap 
hard drives, at least in anything even remotely in my price range.  NAS 
- which is probably going to have its own version of RAID?

Thanks,

Monte