Re: [exim] [OT] RAID (was: Re: Which hardware do you use for…

On Thu, 2008-06-12 at 09:49 +0100, Martin.Hepworth wrote:
> Software raid isn't optimal....never has been

Amen to that, brother :)

> Hardware raid is the way to go if you need RAID.

In my experience also, and the more expensive the device the better it
will be at handling faults.

AMI/LSI MegaRaid and their myriad cousins - Dell PERC, HP NetRaid (as
they used to be) and so on are boards I have way too much experience of,
and that experience is almost always of the painful type. I've seen way
too many controllers go bang and take entire arrays with them - those on
this list who know which company I used to work for may well be familiar
with that...

I swear by NetApp kit, personally (although I'm not using any right now
as $workplace is a Sun shop at the moment). Anything of that class -
EMC, IBM, bigass HP StorageWorks stuff, BlueArc and all the competition
- tend to be rock-solid when it comes to the RAID aspects of their
hardware. Failed (or failing?) disk? No problem. Let me order you a new
one from HQ. Failed (or failing) hardware? No problem, I'll let you
know, let HQ know, and failover to the spare unit.

Nigel mentioned Planet/Freeserve; I used to work for PIPEX. The whole
mail infrastructure for dial/ADSL users was a Postfix/Courier/Perdition
mashup using Maildir on NetApp filers for storage. The hosting mail
platform (and later 123-Reg's mail also) was built originally using
Exim/Courier with LVS for HA/LB and a pair of filers as the backend. I
believe it's now using a BlueArc device, but times have changed in that
business so it could be using anything!

The issue with all of that class is the software surrounding the basics
- some of it has become so complex that it can be very difficult to
choose which one to use.

Normal service will resume shortly :)

Graeme

PS. I did manage to mention Exim so it's not totally OT!