[TriLUG] Raid gurus?

[Cristobal Palmer]

That (pulling a drive from an array) sounds like an expensive, risky
(you have to open the box, after all) and time-consuming way to do
backups. raid1 is a great way to prevent some disasters, but (as Rick
pointed out) it's not for doing backups.

How much data are you needing to back up? More than 4GB at a time? If
not, you could use dd piped through gzip (or bzip2) to make image
backups that you write to a DVD. DVD burners are pretty cheap these
days.

Alternatively you could go with a backup service. There are plenty of
them out there. There are also backup appliances, but then you're
really talking about money.

-CMP

On 3/15/06, WA Brown <brownwa at ftc-i.net> wrote:
> Thats some of what I need to know. I have been working on the server backup.
> I was wondering if the raid set up would do what I needed. What I am
> thinking is that with Raid1, can I unplug one drive ,then plug in another
> and use that as a backup disk? Will the Raid build the new drive that I put
> in place? I have read a bunch about Raid but it dont answer these questions.
> Or am I thinking wrong?
>
>
> WA Brown
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Cristobal Palmer" <cristobalpalmer at gmail.com>
> To: "Triangle Linux Users Group discussion list" <trilug at trilug.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, March 14, 2006 7:58 PM
> Subject: Re: [TriLUG] Raid gurus?
>
>
> Did you look at
> http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-RAID-HOWTO-1.html#ss1.4 already?
>
> If a raid array is degraded by the complete loss of a drive, it
> (software raid as described in the howto) won't automatically restore
> it after it is reconnected.
>
> see http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-RAID-HOWTO-6.html#ss6.3 for
> info on how to simulate a failure.
>
> We have a talk on LVM available in our archives, too. You might be
> interested in doing raid + LVM.
>
> http://www.trilug.org/talks/2005-10-raid/md-lvm-presentation
>
> Peace,
> CMP
>
> On 3/14/06, WA Brown <brownwa at ftc-i.net> wrote:
> > I have read some about Raid. Please explain what happens with Raid
> > 1(mirroring). Does it do this automatically or something has to be done
> > for
> > the working drive to take over? What would happen if I disconected one of
> > the drives in a Raid1 config? Would the other drive automatically take
> > over?
> > After the disk is put back in will the Raid update the drive to match the
> > first one?Automatically?
> >
> >
> > WA Brown
> >
> >
> > --
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> >
>
>
> --
>
> Cristobal M. Palmer
> UNC-CH SILS Student
> cristobalpalmer at gmail.com
> cmpalmer at ils.unc.edu
> ils.unc.edu/~cmpalmer
> "Television-free since 2003"
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>


--

Cristobal M. Palmer
UNC-CH SILS Student
cristobalpalmer at gmail.com
cmpalmer at ils.unc.edu
ils.unc.edu/~cmpalmer
"Television-free since 2003"