On mar, oct 12, 1999 at 10:19:00 -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> automatic rebuilds using hot spares without having to roll my own scripts
> to do so
I'm pretty sure software RAID5 will rebuild parity on a spare disk if it
takes another drive off-line
> ability to boot from a RAID5 (though AFAIK, lilo can boot from software
> mirrored partitions now, no?)
Correct.
Note that depending on the Raid card and the distribution, you may not be
able to boot on it without bootstrapping your distribution (i.e. debian
won't work with a DAC960 if / in on the RAID array. You need to install some
other distribution, use it to copy an existing debian system, and change the
kernel on the debian partition)
> Not being forced to go SMP just to give software RAID a CPU to play
> on...what if we find our system isn't SMP stable? That may not be likely,
> especially with 2.2.x or 2.4.x, but it was still a serious issue with
> 2.0.x.
SMP hasn't really been a problem with 2.2.x. Most of our servers at VA are
SMP, and I haven't yet noticed any problems that weren't due to some
hardware failure.
Of course YMMV :-)
For me, one big advantage of hardware raid is disk shelves with hotswapping.
Doing this in a PC case is awkward and usually a hack
Marc
--
Microsoft is to software what McDonalds is to gourmet cooking
Home page: http://marc.merlins.org/ (friendly to non IE browsers)
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