Re: Raid 6--best practices

[linbloke <linbloke@fastmail.fm>]

On 20/01/12 2:16 PM, Shain Miley wrote:
> Mathias,
> Thank you very much for the helpful advice.
>
> Shain
>
> ________________________________________
> From: Mathias Burén [mathias.buren@gmail.com]
> Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2012 10:06 PM
> To: Shain Miley
> Cc: linux-raid@vger.kernel.org
> Subject: Re: Raid 6--best practices
>
> On 20 January 2012 02:54, Shain Miley<SMiley@npr.org>  wrote:
>> Hello all,
>> I have been doing some research into possible alternatives to our
>> OpenSolaris/ZFS/Gluster file server.  The main reason behind this is,
>> due to RedHat's recent purchase of Gluster, our current configuration
>> will no longer be supported and even before the acquisition, the upgrade
>> path for the OpenSolaris/ZFS stack was murky at best.
>>
>> The current servers in question consist of a total of 48, 2TB drives.
>> My thought was that I would setup a total of 6 RAID-6 arrays (each
>> containing 7 drives + a spare or a flat 8 drive RAID-6 config) and place
>> LVM + XFS on top of that.
>>
>> My questions really are:
>>
>> a)    What is the maximum number of drives typically seen in a RAID-6
>> setup like this?  I noticed when looking at the Backblaze blog, that
>> they are using RAID-6 with 15 disks (13 + 2 for parity).  That number seemed
>> kind of high to me....but I was wondering what others on the list thought.
>>
>> b)    Would you recommend using any specific Linux distro over any other?
>> Right now I am trying to decide between Debian and Ubuntu....but I would be open to
>> any others...if there was a legitimate reason to do so (performance, stability, etc) in terms of the Raid codebase.
>>
>> Thanks in advance,
>>
>> Shain
>>
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>
> Hi,
>
> Personally I wouldn't use more than 10 HDDs in a RAID6 setup (+ spare
> perhaps). Regarding the choice of distribution, it doesn't matter
> really. Pick the one you're comfortable with.
>
> Good luck!
>
> /M

Whilst I love Debian, I find the release schedule a bit frustrating. If 
you can hold off until May (a big stretch for projects wanting to go 
now, I know), then it may be worth looking at Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and get 5 
years of supported OS.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PrecisePangolin/ReleaseSchedule

Just a thought. Get Debian stability and Ubuntu long term support.

Cheers,

Josh

>
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