Well... don't forget that Linux has a response to ZFS in the works: btrfs. While still not quite ready for primetime, the VAST majority of patches these days are of the look-at-what-we-can-optimize-and-or-make-better variety, as opposed to the oh-sh**-this-would-lose-data type.
*IF* you don't mind getting fairly heavily into it, there's a lot to be had. Snapshots, clones (which are like hard links, but the two (or more) clones diverge when one gets written to), the FS is, itself, RAID-aware, it's got checksums (so when you read data, you get to be *sure* it's the right data), on-line fsck (in the works, IIRC), etc. It's already been released for beta use in most distributions, and I'd expect to see it getting introduced for production use within a year. $.02, -Ken On Thu, February 24, 2011 11:44 am, Sam Hooker wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA512 > > > - ----- Original Message ----- > >> Anthony Carrico <[email protected]> writes: >> >>> I've got two 2T drives (WD20EARS) and an old motherboard for a >>> backup server (not an easy time for me, but my old backup system, which >>> supports a few people, is running out of space). I plan to use raid >>> to mirror them. Actually I've got four of these drives, two for >>> another computer. >> >> I have 4 750GB drives in a raid 1+0. I've had drive failures due to a >> bad SATA cable (easily recoverable, of course), another due to a proper >> drive failure, and its replacement is already showing SMART >> Raw_Read_Error_Rate and Hardware_ECC_Recovered counts. "raid 0 and >> pray" is good advice for just 2 drives :) . In that case, I'd also >> suggest having a spare already on hand, and adopting the policy that a >> drive failure is a non-maskable interrupt, that must be dealt with >> before anything else. > > My personal stuff (hosting box; media server; backup server, even) is all > Linux software RAID1 at minimum, since work- and family-obligation > interrupts frequently preempt "hobby stuff" for days or even weeks on > end. (Congrats on your *ahem* "new family-obligation interrupts", BTW!) > >>> Ongoing monitoring? >>> >> >> /me ⥠logwatch and smartd, but I'm an amateur at this stuff. >> > > Again, speaking only for my personal boxes: the physical machines' > logwatches are the only ones I read religiously, scanning daily for > security stuff and the dreaded SMART errors. I backstop that with a > rudimentary check (15-minute cron job, but it could easily be parleyed > into a Nagios check, for instance) that emails on md array/member > failure. That's attached (perl script), without warranty of fitness for > any particular purpose blah blah blah etc I rest my case. (Read: I wrote > it late at night and it may miss critical conditions. Let me know, will > ya? ;-)) > >>> Is ZFS so great and wonderful that it >>> is worth running BSD (instead of Linux) on a backup server? >> >> ZFS always seemed awesome. But, Apple stopped using ZFS, and Oracle >> already cared about btrfs before buying Sun. Is it even an option? > > I'm certainly no ZFS expert (barely even familiar, really), so please > take this worth a grain of salt, but a good buddy of mine (Windows guy) > decided to dip his toe in the FOSS waters by building a FreeNAS[1] box > with ~6TB of formatted ZFS, only to have it crap out in mysterious and > opaque ways. This was at least a year ago, and he turned to me as his > "Unix guy" friend to help him recover all his family's digital photos. We > tried all manner of juju over the course of a week or two, and got > nothing. I recall that the docs (both the ZFS util man pages and > web-available stuff) were not terribly helpful, and the whole affair left > a bad taste in my mouth. That may have changed in the intervening time, > though. Oh, and his were WD "green" drives, of some stripe. Caveat > administrator. :-) > > > Cheers, > > > - -sth > > > [1]http://freenas.org > > > sam hooker|[email protected]|http://www.noiseplant.com > > "Elmo: The Other Red Meat." > -akw > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (Darwin) > Comment: Use GnuPG with Firefox : http://getfiregpg.org (Version: 0.8) > > > iQIcBAEBCgAGBQJNZor/AAoJEPoh2/xXOP2jo/MQALq6kFFYrqisaaQiwif7Vc0c > 5JPNpSY8mIKywZDzmYd6x24IcFEk++enFfN73lfNUgGZjPy5jS3hYJdzwmTTfFXD > d1MeGOQfTEFt7D2tRZWouONuJsjlnB1dWiqjOIo2tSkvtEuNcSuJgojq8sOrQ07l > yFhnLXZ0Cj+c2lMo8rstrzrIPb4FKKRJbQsKByMKYsci9jNI7xkj5lqVmv1Vn9vR > BCFUx0SCI5AwR5RQVPDHx2QB+b2HQIoyDBPESdE6G+NOcZfAkZBoMj6cLsHRaZuX > AiG5Zq0xqT1hMQAxBQMw416SgRaXXVeD8LZcqKRj0OxY+RIENO67oB5iNuKCgIVd > Uxf5F4p4/K0Y5WhpgwE5DkZo9a6Ivjy35dU215Dl9ysX7/vBhUklvuxccaRoYxXh > NLuRZmVDijWy5LCJzImsMbtJ8bD6D65OhimA8WszoH5frf+MC049m61B5jhsF4Uq > yIUsKy1hRe58y2HS51jQiRr/Ez+s7FC8NLDqelch3Jq5ALoiea82WCTpTaKcxsg4 > 4/LRoryOg+mFNUG9/LGhq0nBSqODfZAPlBv4fSQoIlSO0uPg3G4nsl9KgWU+y+zV > uVF6coDGe3pxHmh/394YYVAHE4hn1Y6+R9ixjIX3bkTVo2i2E3zncV8iKaiHhsDg > xHOBFNx+Lbn0xrpRHTG4 =Gb6R > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > > > > >
