Re: [gentoo-server] what is the best filesystem for a server

[RijilV]

2008/6/9 "Todd M. Hébert" <todd@×××.ie>:
> We use RAID 1 on servers that are not file servers, RAID 4 or 5 on
> file-servers (depending on how much need for redundancy we have on a

Doesn't RAID 4 and 5 offer the same level of protection?   I thought
the only difference was RAID4 had a dedicated parity device whereas
RAID5 stripes parity information across all devices.  In either case,
loose two drives and the RAID is toast.


> We're in a data centre that isn't likely to have blackouts.  (It can run on
> batteries for 6 hours, and has diesel generators with 48-hours worth of fuel
> on-site, as well as an emergency supply-chain for the diesel.)

I too have been in very very high profile very very nice data centers
with a jabillion hours of battery backup and even more of generator
power.   One time someone hit the BIG RED BUTTON on the floor where
our gear was caged and presto - power was gone.  Another time the city
cut the power mains to the building, and the generator that was
supposta supply half of our racks someone had left in "manual" mode as
apposed to automatic, thus taking out a fair number of our servers.  I
think if you ask any sufficiently large group of people for horor
stories of power going out in a N+2 redundant power environmnet,
you'll get way more than you were looking for.


> I've not seen problems as described below on 3Ware cards... I believe the
> configuration for each RAID is is backed-up on each disk in the RAID set.
>  I've never had a problem with those.  (I have seen a problem with another

I too have only ever had wonderful experiences with 3Ware cards under
Linux.  I've not had one of their cards fail, but have had backplanes
fail and bad cables.   Diagonosing and getting your vendor to admit to
a bad backplane generally requires more than one outtage :(  Now LSI
cards on the otherhand have caused me some grief.


> XFS filesystems no all of the above, just for reference.

FWIW, always have run ext3, unless it was before ext3 was 'stable',
then it was ext2.

.r'
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