RE: Re: [OT] VERY STUPID RAID QUESTION!

["Phil Harris" <phil@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> You missed the bit where I have just had a re-run with a
> customer's server (we didn't build it) Same Card, different
> OS, same problem. One failing disk wiped out the entire
> array, despite being "hardware fault tolerant".

No I didn't...

> I bought the rocket raid for hardware RAID.. and it didn't
> work when it was needed! My customer was advised to buy one
> for hardware RAID.. and it didn't work.
>
> These rocket raid cards are an absolute liability Phil. I
> *hope* you don't get to see your entire volume go ass-up if a
> disk ever fails, but based on the failure rate I have seen so
> far, the hardware raid is a joke.

What I'm trying to say is weigh up your needs ... If the risks of the
storage system you're looking at are too great then use something else
but there are risks associated with anything. So far my experience of
SCSI RAID hasn't been great (Sorry - DPT were part of Adaptec - not
Promise) as we had the DPT card / drives fail on us last year at work
and we would have lost a lot of data had we not had a backup strategy
(albeit a very simple batch copy scheduled in Windows to copy the main
databases off the server to a desktop machine each evening) in place.

For my domestic use there was no other solution to getting 8 ATA133
drives hardware RAIDed (Promise as far as I'm aware still don't have
cards that can handle 8 ATA133 drives). I *COULD* have bought 3Ware IDE
RAID controllers but they were more than I was willing to pay for my
domestic servers and also I have heard horror stories about 3Ware cards
too...

I hope I don't see my DVD server array go tits up but if it does it does
so after I had to weigh up the pros and cons ... IDE RAID isn't evil.
Just as Windows isn't evil, Linux isn't evil, MacOS isn't evil. Just
evaluate realistically what you *NEED* and what you are prepared to
spend achieving it.

Phil