At 11:11 AM 3/17/99 +0100, Tony Wildish, exts 77103 / 71207 wrote:
> If anyone out there has any long-term experience with Linux-RAID in a
>production environment would they please let me know (either directly or
>via this list).
We've been testing 0.90 with Linux 2.0.36 (a system upgraded from Redhat
5.2) for about six weeks. Our test load consists of a quarter news feed to
INND on a RAID0 partition, a proprietary process generating a similar load
on a RAID5 partition, and a tiny mail load on another RAID5 partition.
We ran into the same configuration problems mentioned several times on this
list.
We encountered numerous reliability problems initially. Eventually these
were tracked down to a faulty motherboard and an incorrect terminator on a
SCSI chain. Now that these have been fixed it has been running without
RAID or SCSI errors for a couple of weeks (although INND has filled its
partition a few times).
We have forced one RAID5 rebuild and it worked, but only after changing the
order that drives were listed in /etc/raidtab and fighting the bootup
sequence for an hour or two.
Some applications really push your hardware. Test it thoroughly before
going live.
Unlike the old mdtools RAID0 which we have been using under 2.0.27 through
2.0.35 for a couple of years, the current RAID is *not* yet suitable for
remote servers without console access. It *seems* to be reliable but the
configuration and reconfiguration are too flakey at this time. We will be
using it for an in-house mail/web server where we have 24x7 console access
in case of problems.
--Mike
----------------------------------------------------------
Mike Bird Tel: 209-742-5000 FAX: 209-966-3117
President POP: 209-742-5333 PGR: 209-742-9979
Iron Mtn Systems http://member.yosemite.net/
