On Thu 16 Oct 2008 22:45:18 NZDT +1300, Jim Cheetham wrote:

> Well, you can restore the OS from an install CD easily enough, and as
> long as you've got a list of installed packages, you'll be good to go
> quickly enough.

Uhhm,

> Having said that, I don't have any customer servers that aren't on
> RAID1 for their OS, because no-one wants to waste time restoring from
> backup, or reinstalling :-)

exactly. I can be without computer for the number of days it takes to
get a new disk, then spend 2h installing Linux and anything up to X to
configure it again the way I had it. Or I can take a slightly older disk
from a previous computer, or buy another smaller disk, put it in as
well, and remain mostly operational (and fully for email etc) all the
way. There's just no comparison. Mount the non-raided disk partitions of
the two disks as /data and /biggerdata, use one for your collections and
the other for on-disk ISOs of your install media or latest backups.

Raid doesn't do away with the need for backups, but the hassles it saves
are enormous. A fortnight ago I ran badblocks etc and the works on one
disk while keeping on working on the other disk. No problems, just a few
reallocated sectors, so hot-add it again. Zero downtime.

Volker

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Volker Kuhlmann                 is list0570 with the domain in header
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