| Author |
Message |
Richard
Guest
|
 Posted:
Sun Nov 07, 2004 5:52 pm Post subject:
spanning 2 raid 5 volumes |
|
|
Hi,
I would be interested if anyone can comment on the merits of spanning two
raid5 volumes.
I have just acquired a server built into a Supermicro SC933T-R760 chassis.
The 15 drive bays are populated with 14 Maxline II 250gb sata drives
installed for data storage and a WD Raptor for the OS. The OS drive is
conected to a sata port on the motherboard and the 14 Maxline II drives are
connected to an Adaptec 21610SA controller card.
My supplier has configured 13 Maxline IIs as Raid 5 and into 2 volumes. The
14th Maxline is configured as a global hot swap spare. The OS is W2003
Server which in disk management shows the 2 volumes as two physical drives
(I think). The OS has then been used to span these 2 drives together thus
showing one volume in My Computer with a capacity of 2.5tb.
As far as I understand it if a drive fails the raid will begin to rebuild
using the hot swap spare. I am not sure about how the spanning affects data
resilience and also for that matter performance. Comments would be
appreciated.
Regards Richard |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Nik Simpson
Guest
|
| Posted:
Sun Nov 07, 2004 8:26 pm Post subject:
Re: spanning 2 raid 5 volumes |
|
|
Richard wrote:
| Quote: | As far as I understand it if a drive fails the raid will begin to
rebuild using the hot swap spare.
|
Assuming the controller supports a hot spare this is correct.
| Quote: | I am not sure about how the
spanning affects data resilience and also for that matter
performance. Comments would be appreciated.
|
As to resilience, I don't see that it will have any impact, if anything it
will be more resilient. With all the drives in a single RAID-5, two drives
failing simultaneously will mean the drive is gone. With two seperate
stripes, you could suffer two failures (assuming they are in seperate
stripes) without the drive going offline.
Performance is going to depend on what type of application you are using the
server for, some types of workload might be faster, some might be slower.
--
Nik Simpson |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
stevem
Guest
|
| Posted:
Fri Nov 19, 2004 11:22 pm Post subject:
Re: spanning 2 raid 5 volumes |
|
|
I agree with Nik. Remember with all RAIDs, change that bad drive ASAP.
Time is not always no our side.
"Nik Simpson" <n_simpson@bellsouth.net> wrote in message news:<76rjd.35643$Om6.16679@bignews5.bellsouth.net>...
| Quote: | Richard wrote:
As far as I understand it if a drive fails the raid will begin to
rebuild using the hot swap spare.
Assuming the controller supports a hot spare this is correct.
I am not sure about how the
spanning affects data resilience and also for that matter
performance. Comments would be appreciated.
As to resilience, I don't see that it will have any impact, if anything it
will be more resilient. With all the drives in a single RAID-5, two drives
failing simultaneously will mean the drive is gone. With two seperate
stripes, you could suffer two failures (assuming they are in seperate
stripes) without the drive going offline.
Performance is going to depend on what type of application you are using the
server for, some types of workload might be faster, some might be slower. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
|
|
FAQ
Memberlist
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in