Re: RAID 5 q - in simpler terms - THANKS!

From: Hunter, Mark (Mark.Hunter_at_ANHEUSER-BUSCH.COM)
Date: 02/15/05

  • Next message: Leyden, Joseph: "Re: RAID 5 q - in simpler terms - THANKS!"
    Date:         Tue, 15 Feb 2005 11:31:15 -0600
    To: aix-l@Princeton.EDU
    
    

    On SSA, we use 0+1, all software based. Using mklv with -u, -S, and -c. This
    tends to balance I/O better than we can by hand. The complexity increases
    because certain commands change behavior if it's a striped logical volume. For
    example, if its striped on disks 1-4, then all expansion will be on disks 1-4.
    Also, if you lose one disk in a stripe, the sync requires all disks in the stipe
    to be resynced. The -P option to syncvg is your friend.

    We are in the process of moving to hardware based Raid-5 for almost all of our
    systems for non rootvg data. We have an enterprise Hitachi SAN. The economy of
    scale helps the cost plus it saves a lot of floor space.

    On your statement that no downtime is ever involved on mirroring, that's not
    strictly true. If the wrong two drives fail, you will have downtime. We have
    had situations where both the primary and secondary copies of a mirror have
    failed at nearly the same time. 4 drives mirrored to 4 other drives, but the
    "wrong" two drives failed. With raid-5, its any two drives, so it's a greater
    chance, but with autospare we have not seen it happen.

    We have found that the Hitachi Raid-5 SAN solution is at least as reliable as
    most mirroring options in practice.

    Mark Hunter
    Anheuser-Busch Cos.
    MIS Consultant, ES&SO Server Planning and Integration
    *Office: (314) 632-6663
    *Fax: (314) 632-6901
    *Pager: (314) 841-4026
    *Email: Mark.Hunter@Anheuser-Busch.com

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    -----Original Message-----
    From: IBM AIX Discussion List [mailto:aix-l@Princeton.EDU] On Behalf Of Green,
    Simon
    Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2005 4:52 AM
    To: aix-l@Princeton.EDU
    Subject: Re: RAID 5 q - in simpler terms - THANKS!

    That's generally my view. Of course, when you start talking about
    multi-terabyte arrays the potential cost savings are considerable. But for
    smaller stuff, if you're just using SSA or something like that RAID-0 is much
    simpler to manage and gives excellent results.

    Some people favour RAID 0+1, where you stripe the data - simple RAID 1 with no
    parity - then mirror it, (or vice versa: it can make a difference). This gives
    you something of the best of both worlds but it adds to the complexity.

    --
    Simon Green
    Altria ITSC Europe s.a.r.l.
    AIX-L Archive at https://new-lists.princeton.edu/listserv/aix-l.html
    New to AIX? http://publib-b.boulder.ibm.com/redbooks.nsf/portals/UNIX
    N.B. Unsolicited email from vendors will not be appreciated.
    Please post all follow-ups to the list.
    > -----Original Message-----
    > From: IBM AIX Discussion List [mailto:aix-l@Princeton.EDU] On Behalf
    > Of Leyden, Joseph
    > Sent: 14 February 2005 18:56
    > To: aix-l@Princeton.EDU
    > Subject: Re: RAID 5 q - in simpler terms - THANKS!
    >
    >
    > Thanks! You've answered my question with the overhead being the parity
    > data. I mentioned the word 'compressed' so we can talk strictly in
    > terms of bytes.
    >
    > Therefore (on the array of 5 disk say 1 disk is 9 GIG) I can not have
    > 45 gig of application data but only about 32 GIG. AND some time
    > overhead in rebuilding the replaced failed disk.
    >
    > I'm inclined to think that if I can afford disk (1 to 1) mirroring I
    > should stick with it since NO downtime is ever involved.
    

  • Next message: Leyden, Joseph: "Re: RAID 5 q - in simpler terms - THANKS!"

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