Ken, I can't speak about the MD1200 as we use DMX-3/4 SAN devices. But I'd go with option 2 instead of 1.
A) using your MD to offer virtual devices may give you options utilizing the intelligence of that box. Say to mirror a drive or copy devices over dark fiber to replicate them on another site. B) should a virt device fail, you can use your MD box to create another, restore a backup and continue. If it is all one large file system, you depend only on Linux to give you storage smarts. With option 2 you can have both. If you have good SAN people, they'll know how to deal with it. Also, using the smarts of the MD box may let you swap broken drives on the fly as redundance is handled by the MD box. It it's Linux and LVM it all depends on how someone configured the LVM, stripes and so on and so forth. Too many variables. :) HIH, Chris. > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ken Nishimura > Sent: Monday, May 03, 2010 11:56 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Storage Configuration using R710 and MD1200 > > > Trying to bring up a new DAS fileserver comprised of a R710 > as host with a PERC H800 connected to a MD1200 with about > 12TB (raw) of drives. > > We currently have a Nexsan ATABoy connected to a HP > fileserver over SCSIU320 which we are replacing. > > Currently, the ATABoy whose controller is on the disk array > is configured to look like one large LUN of 4.8TB -- > internally it is RAID5 over 14 spindles. > > We currently use that single LUN as a single PE on lvm, and > use lvm to create a bunch of logical volumes which are then > used as needed. > > Question: What is recommended? We want to have a bunch of > filesystems of approximately 500 GB in size. I can see > several scenarios: > > 1) Replicate what we have. Configure the PERC to create one > huge virtual disk which is RAIDed on the PERC controller as a > single physical drive to lvm. Use lvm to create logical > volumes as needed > > 2) Use the PERC controller to make several large (>>500 GB) > virtual drives and then partition each of those to create the > disk lumps we want. > > 3) Use the PERC controller to make a large number of ~500 GB > virtual drives and use them each individually. > > What works best? Any other ideas? > > Some points: > > Under (1), the single drive would show as /dev/sda, and we > would use lvm to make that some /dev/vg1. The names of each > of the volumes under > /dev/vg1 is fully under our control. We could assign a > sensible name to each of the volumes (e.g. > /dev/vg1/source_tree instead of /dev/sda?) > > Under (2) or (3), the device name created by the PERC > controller is somewhat hit or miss -- you know what you get, > but depending of how things are reconfigured, could you not > end up with a different device name? > That would be a pain. I suppose one could use udev, but that > seems like another set of files to maintain. > > Am I missing something? > > Thanks, > > Ken > > _______________________________________________ > Linux-PowerEdge mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.us.dell.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-poweredge > Please read the FAQ at http://lists.us.dell.com/faq > _______________________________________________ Linux-PowerEdge mailing list [email protected] https://lists.us.dell.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-poweredge Please read the FAQ at http://lists.us.dell.com/faq
