Re: [exim] RAID level for mailstore

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Author: Jeroen van Aart
Date:  
To: exim-users
Subject: Re: [exim] RAID level for mailstore
Tom Brown wrote:

> I wonder what people think for a RAID level for their mail stores?


> I can only have RAID 1 or RAID 5 and i dont have many users ~500 so what
> do people think? This will be on a hardware RAID card but the RAID


I'd say never use raid5 it makes no sense. The idea behind it was to be
able to have more space per amount of disks. But since disks are so
cheap and raid5 can fail much easier this is false economy.

There is also an argument that raid5 renders itself unusable at some
point with increasing hd sizes. In short disk manufacturers claim 1
failure per y amount of bytes read. With large enough disks the chance
of having a failure while recovering a raid5 becomes close to 100%, in
theory. Which means a failure can not be recovered.

I use a raid1 for mail storage. It's faster and more redundant.
Alternatively you could use a raid10.

For reference: "Why RAID 5 stops working in 2009"
http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=162 and
http://www.miracleas.com/BAARF/BAARF2.html

Best regards,
Jeroen