On Thu, 8 Jul 1999, Admin Mailing Lists wrote:
>
> I run 5 linux boxes and 2 NT servers on a network. All servers have 9G
> scsi drives in them. Currently we back up the most important data to DDS3
> tape..about 11G. We would like a better solution to this for full
> redundancy. We thought about putting another 9G in each server and doing
> software raid1 (on linux at least, dunno how we could do this in NT)
>
> So we thought, ok that solves us if we have a hardware (drive) problem,
> but what if it's software that gets corrupted along the way, or something
> gets installed that on reboot will break it. Then you got 2 exact copies
> of bad data. For example..our 1 NT server was up for like a month and a
> half, I rebooted it one day and it never came back up. It wasn't a
> hardware problem, but something with windows. Now if i was doing raid 1,
> it wouldn't matter, i'd still have a windows that wont boot on both
> drives.
>
> Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Raid helps save you from hardware failurs not OS corruption or application
corruption.
Raid is not a solution to backups. You also need to be carefull of bad
backups(I know of a bank that once had several months of backups that were
corrupted).
There are a number of rules of thumb that will help:
- try and seperate application files and system files If possible keep
them on seperate disks. and backup the various areas as approprate.
- try and keep transaction records. They can help rebuild a busted
database.
- verify your backups. If possible use them to rebuild a system to prove
you can recover from your backups.
- If you install software or reconfigure a system service. Reboot!
- If you build or modify software to suit your setup keep all changes
under some revision control system.
Alvin Starr || voice: (416)585-9971
Interlink Connectivity || fax: (416)585-9974
[EMAIL PROTECTED] ||
