On Sat, 2010-12-25 at 08:47 -0500, Ryan Wagoner wrote: > On Sat, Dec 25, 2010 at 2:15 AM, Benjamin Smith > <lists at benjamindsmith.com> wrote: > > IMHO, very few people really need RAID. In many (most?) cases, the added > > complexity of RAID is as likely to cause an increase of failure rate similar > > to or greater than the reduction of failure rate caused by the resiliancy of > > hardware. RAID won't protect you if you issue a perfectly legitimate command > > to delete data that was made in error. I once thought I needed RAID, and since > > realized the error in my ways, finding that the cases where RAID helped (one!) > > was vastly outnumbered by the cases where it made no difference (10? 11?) or > > actually worked against me. (2) Now, I don't bother with RAID even though my > > needs have grown from one server to 16, instead providing redundancy at the > > machine level: if a server goes, another picks up the load, in most cases > > automatically, in near-real-time. I can do this because I host a custom-made > > application with these objectives carefully designed for. > > I'm not sure why you have so many problems with RAID. +1 > I will never run a production server without RAID. A simple mirror > (RAID 1) potentially increases up time and doesn't add much complexity. +1 And a lowly technician can do it while I'm on vacation. > time. Failing over to another server is always great, but why be one > server down for a simple drive failure. Depending on the application failing to another server is also fraught with issues. > Not to mention the speed increases from RAID 5 or 10. Speed increase from RAID 10 yes, not RAID 5. <http://www.miracleas.com/BAARF/BAARF2.html>