[X-Servers] Xserve & RAID...

[Brent Baisley]

Actually SoftRAID (the product) can be used on a boot drive now. I  
actually just bought the latest copy after using it all the time  
under OS9. The OS X built in software RAID has severe limitations in  
rebuilding boot drives. I recently had a mirrored boot drive fail on  
an XServe. I got a new drive, popped it in and went to rebuild the  
mirror. That's when I found out the Apple's software RAID won't  
rebuild a mirrored drive for a boot volume, you need to boot off of  
something else. I also found out that you really need to use the  
command line to try to rebuild drives if you want to really know  
what's going on and get feedback on errors. Not a big deal, but  
something to know. I found it very annoying that I had to schedule  
downtime to rebuild the mirror.

SoftRAID, on the other hand, can rebuild mirrored boot drives and it  
will report errors it notices during normal operation. It's a bit  
more robust than Apple's built-in software RAID.


On Nov 4, 2005, at 5:47 AM, Dave Walker wrote:

> Hi Matthew
>
> The short answer is yes and no - you can do RAID 1 without the  
> card, and with built in software, but it is a bit slow
> RAID 5 you will need the hardware card - (recommended - I use it  
> and it is very quick). SoftRAID would work OK for a set of external  
> drives, but I don't think you can use it as a bootable drive, hence  
> no use for Xserve on its own
>
> Hope this helps
>
>
>
> Dave
>
> On 4 Nov 2005, at 07:50, Matthew Barr wrote:
>
>
>> We're looking into getting our first Xserve, and I want to make  
>> sure to have RAID 1 or 5  for the drives, but wasn't sure if the  
>> normal Xserve can be configured in OS X Server to use the  the  
>> drive bays as RAID 1 or 5 without the hardware RAID card.
>>
>> Any one know?  Oddly enough, we've never had OS X Server  around,  
>> just a lot of clients, and linux servers... I'm looking forward to  
>> having one, but without it here and now.. it's tough to know.
>>
>> Matthew
>>
>> Matthew Barr
>> Managing Partner
>> Datalyte Consulting, LLC
>> mailto:mbarr at datalyte.com
>> cell: (646) 765-6878
>>
>>
>>
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>
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>
>

-- 
Brent Baisley
Systems Architect
Landover Associates, Inc.
Search & Advisory Services for Advanced Technology Environments
p: 212.759.6400/800.759.0577