On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 04:14, Henry, Andrew<andrew.henry@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > That's what my question was: Will raid0 (striping) be faster or easier to manage than lvm striping LVM striping won't change performance for small files. (That is files, smaller than the extent size.) To be fair, RAID-0 striping won't accelerate file access for files smaller than the stripe size either. However, traditionally, raid0 stripe sizes are much much smaller than LVM extent sizes. Both are however adjustable. Either way, you will be reading from one disk and then another, and then another, etc. The smaller the stripe size, the more likely multiple disks will be doing their seeks and dma transfers at the same time. For this reason, I would recommend RAID-0 if you don't need uptime, and you keep backups elsewhere, and all you need is the most speed you can get. LVM is more about flexibility than performance. I don't use LVM striping, but if I did, I would be using it to distribute wear between multiple raid arrays; not for performance. LVM on top of RAID is exceptionally common. Use RAID for performance and availability, then use LVM for flexibility. "Easier to manage"? Stop managing. Start using. With LVM on top of raid, you can hot-move the logical volume off the raid0 array for maintenance to the raid0 array. You can extend it onto new raid0 arrays. I'm fairly sure you can grow an existing raid0 array even while it is in use onto additional disks. But if you're playing with raid0 or lvm striping, I wouldn't as much worry about being able to manage it while its in use. Just do your managing when you replace a failed disk (and have to recreate the entire array or logical volume). -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
