Re: second pre-emptive raid: stripes and the os

2008-06-30 Thread prad
On Sun, 29 Jun 2008 14:56:57 -0700
prad [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 based on the excellent ideas from the first pre-emptive raid thread we
 have been considering raid1+0 or raid5 for our server

our server just arrived today!! and there was an unexpected surprise in
it - a raid card mylex extreme raid2000 which worked right away. does
anyone know about the quality of this card?

so we will be using that instead of software raid, though i still would
like to know how you setup a stripe and keep the os on it.

-- 
In friendship,
prad

  ... with you on your journey
Towards Freedom
http://www.towardsfreedom.com (website)
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second pre-emptive raid: stripes and the os

2008-06-29 Thread prad
based on the excellent ideas from the first pre-emptive raid thread we
have been considering raid1+0 or raid5 for our server, but we need to
gain a better understanding of striping.

the mirror concept was easy particularly through dru's Using Software
RAID-1 with FreeBSD:
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2005/11/10/FreeBSD_Basics.html?page=1

the stripe idea is creating some issues.

having gone through both geom and vinum sections of the handbook, we
are confused as to just how stripes fit in with the os. what we have
found on the web sofar is this article on the freebsdwiki:
http://www.freebsdwiki.net/index.php/RAID0,_Software,_How_to_setup

both this article and the geom docs require an installed os, from which
you create the striped device.

so if we had 4 drives da0-3, we could install the os on da0 and then
create a stripe /dev/stripe/st0 with da1-3. however, there would be no
os on there (and most of da0 would be empty). (i suppose you can dd
stuff onto st0, but that seems a bit strange.)

so in a straight striped situation with 4 physical drives, how can you
get the os on there? where does it reside? is it supposed to be striped
across the 4 drives?

or is this the wrong way to look at it. should we be directing our
thoughts to striping across partitions that we create over various
drives after the os has been installed on a small part of the first
drive?

is raid only for data or does the os get raided too?

-- 
In friendship,
prad

  ... with you on your journey
Towards Freedom
http://www.towardsfreedom.com (website)
Information, Inspiration, Imagination - truly a site for soaring I's
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