[Samba] samba failover plan on unix OS using hardware RAID
Hi all, I've been asked to produce a plan for samba failover for an office with about 30 2000/XP machines and a few unix servers. We currently have a FreeBSD single-harddrive SCSI box providing samba, dhcp and dns services. Reliability and cost are the priorities, in that order, over speed/performance. We just need the reliability - we don't ever ever want to have to switch to a new pdc. We could afford a few hours downtime in an emergency, and there would be no data to save, just configs which are easily backed up on a daily basis - I just need to assure my bosses that the trust relationship between the pdc and the XP clients won't be broken, even with a hardware failure. So, my suggestion is IDE hardware RAID 1, single but very good raid card, which can be replaced within a few hours by a trusted vendor, and 2 mirrored harddrives. What I would appreciate in terms of feedback is first, a basic sanity check - is this a standard and good plan? If not - what is and why? And second - I would really like to hear any real-life stories involving samba with hardware RAID on unix. Did anyone have a RAID, blow a harddrive, and have to/not have to rebuild the XP - trust relationship? Thanks much in advance for your time, Jeanne Schock Systems Administrator Regionalhelpwanted.com -- To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the instructions: http://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/samba
RE: [Samba] samba failover plan on unix OS using hardware RAID
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, June 13, 2003 12:25 PM To: Jeanne Schock; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Samba] samba failover plan on unix OS using hardware RAID Bri- I appreciate the comments. To answer some questions - This is an office with a limited number of personnel that isn't going to grow significantly over the next 12-18 months, which is as far as I can look. It will just be serving up samba, dns, dhcp - that's all, not even acting as a file server. I don't think that IDE RAID, with a top quality card, is short-sighted in this regard. That said - I will take a good look at your comments re. scsi hardware. thanks a lot. define my needs: while I agree that reliability is a bit generic, the need I have defined is very specific, and wasn't outright addressed in your comments. I need to be certain, that if one harddrive fails, that the other harddrive will continue as the pdc without any disturbance between XP client and samba server, ie. no loss of trust relationship. Simply put, my bosses want proof that a RAID will provide this failover, and I can't find anything definite on the net on this issue. Thanks again, Jeanne Schock -- To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the instructions: http://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/samba
RE: [Samba] samba failover plan on unix OS using hardware RAID
The RAID hardware is far below samba (or even the operating system), by design. The way that a RAID 5 works is that if you lose 1 drive, nothing notices (except the RAID monitor software, which will hopefully start calling pagers to get the failed drive replaced). Samba won't even notice that the drive has failed. exactly what I needed, thank you very much. Just needed someone out there to confirm. RAID 5 will do it. And I'm not worried about hot swapping - we can have even a few hours downtime if needed. Thanks Mark and to others that responded. Jeanne -- To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the instructions: http://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/samba
