[TriLUG] Ubuntu FakeRAID or Software

matt at noway2.thruhere.net matt at noway2.thruhere.net
Thu Nov 4 08:34:49 EDT 2010


I have been running Ubuntu Server edition with a RAID 1 (two Ultra SCSI
drives) for about 6 months.  So far, it has been very reliable.  I still
have some question as to whether or not it has impacted drive throughput
performance and have run various tools against it such as Bonnie, but
don't have any sort of real bench mark to compare against.

The only time I ran into problems was when I decided to test the RAID.  I
powered down, removed a drive, and restarted.  The server booted just fine
on the one drive.  I then repeated the process with the other drive.

After restoring things to normal, I discovered that disk errors were
discovered and the file system went to read only mode.  I tried to fix it
with chkdsk and made things worse in that one drive wouldn't even boot.

I ended up wiping that HD and booted the system on the one remaining. 
After doing so, the RAID rebuilt and all was well.


> On 11/03/2010 09:51 PM, John Brier wrote:
>> The advantage of Linux MD (Multi Device) RAID is that it will work on
>> any machine with Linux installed. Fake Raid will only work on systems
>> with the same Intel fakeraid chip.. so if your motherboard ever dies
>> your raid is unusable until you get another motherboard with the same
>> chip. With linux software raid you can take the array and hook it up
>> to prety much any machine with a linux distro and it should detect it
>> or at least allow you to activate it or recover it.
>
> This is a very important point. I've found Linux MD to be much more
> flexible and easier to repair. Also, the format of your data on disk
> isn't in a proprietary vendor format.
>
>
>> I don't know what happened with your colleagues, but I have used Linux
>> MD RAID on two different machines in RAID 5 setups for my file servers
>> for two years with no problems.
>
> We have our most critical systems using MD raid and have for many years.
> The only issues I have seen are with MD raided root and getting grub all
> happy after a disk failure / replacement.
>




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