Thread: Re: server hardware recommendations
Yet again, I'd like to bring up this subject from last December. There seemed to be an important point which was overlooked: scalability. Being not so knowledgeable on the subject of raid or any array of disks, I went to the freebsd-scsi and -fs mailing lists to find out about expanding disk space. Unfortunately, all I could find was that solaris could do it. Now I'm back to square one, looking for a storage solution for my postgresql db. More specifically, something scallable and very fast. In my reading, I found that raid5 could also fail and that a tape backup is always recommended. Therefore, I would think raid 0 or 1 or 0+1 could do just fine having a tape backup as fault tolerance. As for a software or hardware implementation, opinions vary. Marc G. Fournier seems to prefer the software solution while there are many people preaching the benefits of hardware raid out there. But the question remains, how can all this be scallable, ie how can I expand on existing storage space. Looking forward to your replies, Marc Tardif
Marc Tardif wrote: > Now I'm back to square one, looking for a storage solution for my > postgresql db. More specifically, something scallable and very fast. In my > reading, I found that raid5 could also fail and that a tape backup is > always recommended. Therefore, I would think raid 0 or 1 or 0+1 could do > just fine having a tape backup as fault tolerance. As for a software or > hardware implementation, opinions vary. Marc G. Fournier seems to prefer > the software solution while there are many people preaching the benefits > of hardware raid out there. But the question remains, how can all this be > scallable, ie how can I expand on existing storage space. On our Digital RAID array you plug in another disk and you tell it to use it. But then, the RAID array is a workstation in its own right, and runs its own operating system. When it comes to RAID I think it is still a matter of you get what you pay for. And yes, we always back up onto DLT (haven't had any failure in the 2 years we've had it though). And we run Digital Unix which is still miles better than any of the free operating systems, especially under heavy load. Adriaan
Marc Tardif wrote: > Now I'm back to square one, looking for a storage solution for my > postgresql db. More specifically, something scallable and very fast. In my ... > of hardware raid out there. But the question remains, how can all this be > scallable, ie how can I expand on existing storage space. Well, Linux and *BSD are still lacking robust implementations of logical volumes. Things probably will change in the near future, as SGI is already porting XFS to Linux. With SGI moving towards a Linux platform for its low-end servers, XLV (the logical volumes layered on top of XFS) are bound to arrive there as well, sooner or later. Sevo -- Sevo Stille sevo@ip23.net