On Fri, Mar 8, 2013 at 6:14 AM, SilverTip257 <silvertip257 at gmail.com> wrote: > > On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 6:54 PM, Gerry Reno <greno at verizon.net> wrote: > > > On 03/07/2013 06:52 PM, Les Mikesell wrote: > > > On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 5:40 PM, John R Pierce <pierce at hogranch.com> > > wrote: > > >> On 3/7/2013 3:35 PM, Gerry Reno wrote: > > >>> Dave, I've been using software raid with every type of RedHat distro > > RH/CentOS/Fedora for over 10 years without any > > >>> serious difficulties. I don't quite understand the logic in all these > > negative statements about software raid on that > > >>> wiki page. The worst I get into is I have to boot from a bootdisk if > > the MBR gets corrupted for any reason. No big > > >>> deal. Just rerun grub. > > >> have you been putting /boot on a mdraid? that's what the article is > > >> recommending against. > > > I've put /boot on md raid1 on a lot of machines (always drives small > > > enough to be MBR based) and never had any problem with the partition > > > looking enough like a native one for grub to boot it. The worst thing > > > > No problems here either - I have had /boot on software raid1 on quite a few > systems past and present. > > > > > I've seen about it is that some machines change their idea of bios > > > > If I do have a drive fail, I can frequently hot-remove them and hot-add the > replacement drive to get it resyncing without powering off. > > > > > disk 0 and 1 when the first one fails, so your grub setup might be > > > wrong even after you do it on the 2nd disk - and that would be the > > > same with/without raid. As long as you are prepared to boot from a > > > rescue disk you can fix it easily anyway. > > > > > Good point, Les. Rescue disks and bootdisks are key and critical if > > you're going to use software raid. > > > > > I think we could argue that rescue disks are a necessity regardless one is > using software raid or not. :) Thanks for all of the helpful info, and now I have a follow on question. I have a Dell m6500 that I've been running as a RAID 1 using the BIOS RAID on RHEL 5. The issue is that when you switch one of the drives, the BIOS renames the RAID and then RHEL 5 doesn't recognize it anymore. So here are my questions: 1) Has this issue of handling the renaming been resolved in RHEL 6? (my guess is no) 2) Would a software RAID be a better choice than using the BIOS RAID? 3) If a software RAID is the better choice, are there going to be an impact on performance/stability/etc? Thanks, Dave