Maybe next time.
------ Original Message ------
From: "Mike Hammett" <af...@ics-il.net>
To: af@afmug.com
Sent: 12/6/2017 7:50:42 AM
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] RAID controller eats disks?
Ditch RAID and just go to HBAs with a better file system like ZFS or
CEPH.
-----
Mike Hammett
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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Dev" <d...@logicalwebhost.com>
To: af@afmug.com
Sent: Tuesday, December 5, 2017 11:48:06 PM
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] RAID controller eats disks?
Old RAID controllers are notorious for misbehaving and giving false
readings on drive/volume health. Additionally, the older the
controller, the harder it is to find good shelf spares with matching
model/firmware, etc. that will be happy reading your RAID volume(s) in
the event of a controller failure. This is why I’ve been slowly
migrating to a reasonably tolerant - like RAID 6 - array which is
configured with software RAID in the native OS (typically Linux in my
case). Nothing wrong with hardware RAID, it just can be a little tricky
to recover data in the event the hardware dies.
With the speed of hardware these days and size of drives, in a 4-drive
array using RAID 6 you can build some very large volumes with great
fault tolerance on vanilla hardware with good I/O performance, and even
if the whole server turns into a smoking hole, you can rebuild your
data on some other standard hardware. Also, as drives increase in
capacity, it’s more important to have more than just one volume for
parity, two is nice in RAID 6.
You might be able to build a new box and start migrating your data in
case you have a failure and difficulty getting your data. Hardware is
usually cheaper than the data on it, and peace of mind is nice. Good
luck whichever way you choose, hope you keep all the important data.
>>
>
I've got a somewhat old Dell Poweredge with a PERC H700 RAID
controller.
About a year ago SMART predicted a failure on disk 4, so I replaced it.
A few weeks ago SMART predicted a failure on disk 4, so I replaced it.
Today SMART predicts a failure on disk 4.
On the second incident I have no doubts, because the disk made audible
noises. I'm just curious why it's always disk 4. Can the controller
conceivably do something that harms the disk? Just a statistical
anomaly?
It's a RAID 1+0 by the way, so there should be a nearly identical
workload on one of the other disks.
