On Mon, Apr 29, 2002 at 09:22:15AM +0200, Louis-David Mitterrand wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> On one of our servers I upgraded the 3x4.2G disks to 3x18G and removed
> the Mylex Acceleraid 160 in favor of pure kernel (2.4.18) root raid5
> (reiserfs) with a small raid1 (ext2) boot partition.
>
> The reasons I did this:
>
> - latest kernel's stability,
> - raid code time tested,
> - simpler hardware configuration,
> - transferability of the disks to a non Mylex-equiped box,
> - better performance?
>
> Is there any downside going from hardware to kernel raid5? It seems to
> work very well.
The only downside that I can think of, is that noone has written drivers for
the typical hot-plug backplanes yet. Therefore, you will not have a pretty LED
blinking to tell you which disk to replace.
For many people this is not really much of a problem. But at some sites it is
- you cannot let the "server monkey" replace disks if there is no clear
idiot-proof indication of which disk to replace. At sites where the
competent administrator may be in a whole other building, this can be a
problem.
Actually, I'd love to see the pretty LEDs flashing when a disk dies too. It is
not a necessity for me, but it would be a convenience.
(mostly because I want the LEDs to do Night-Rider style flashing when the array
is running normally - weehee ! ;)
>
> I even had to switch off the machine during testing because a loose PCI
> card hung it: upong reboot the raid5 partition resynced itself fine. Was
> I just lucky?
I suppose you were lucky you didn't toast your hardware. :)
--
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