Re: [exim] RAID level for mailstore

On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 07:35:38PM +0000, 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
> channel will not be dedicated to the mail store ie there will be another
> RAID disk sharing the channel.

I use hardware raid 1 with lvm and have over the past few years moved
all my machines to xen vm's. This setup has allowed me to transparently
survive lots of disk and machine failures. I use dirvish to backup my
data to two machines, one offsite. This setup also allows me to comply
to recent, not yet ratified but inevitable for some people, EU
regulations about data retention.

I use commodity hardware (read: dell) and have found myself well served
by resolving myself to the fact that my hardware will at some point
fail.

Performance has never been an issue, in fact since I moved to xen I've
noticed a speed boost in many areas for my paravirtualised guests. I
have less than 1000 users so any newish hardware would be unlikely to
break a sweat anyway.

--
Pete