[Gllug] [OT] Re: cheap disk source

[Rich Walker]

Alain Williams <addw at phcomp.co.uk> writes:

> On Wed, Jul 25, 2007 at 01:41:09PM +0100, Rich Walker wrote:
>> 
>> After various fun with machines, I've ended up moving to LVM-on-RAID-1.
>> 
>> RAID-1 because it's clean and simple - you can always find a pair of
>> mostly-matched drives (or split a drive in 2 and use it as halves of two
>> mirrors if needed).
>
> Eh -- are you saying what I think you are: keeping both copies on the same disk ?
> If the disk fails you loose both copies!!!

No, more like this:

Got some 250GB drives. One dies. Replace with a 500GB drive. Partition
the 500GB drive as 2x250GB partitions; use one to replace lost drive,
use the other as half of another mirror or as a spare.

> When building systems for customers I put in disks and RAID-1 them, I
> specify same sized disks from different manufacturers under the theory that
> they are more likely to fail at different times.

I've been going with that, as well as "same manufacturer, different
batch".

In general, I find LVM-on-RAID-1 to be a really nice option, but I
haven't played with partitionable RAID. Being able to use pvmove in
particular is a really nice trick.

cheers, Rich.

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