opinion on which software RAID to use

[Paul Mather]

On Thu, 2006-03-02 at 14:11 -0500, Vivek Khera wrote:

> Anyhow, I see at least three ways to set up a mirror of these drives  
> and/or partitions:
> 
>   gvinum
>   gmirror
>   atacontrol
> 
> Any opinions on which has both qualities: easy to configure/manage  
> (ie, recover after failure) and performance?  The handbook RAID page  
> doesn't even mention gmirror.  The atacontrol seems very simple to  
> use, at least.
> 
> Let me know what you think.  Thanks!

For basic mirroring, I'd say go for gmirror.  I've been using it
successfully for a long time.  I migrated to it from vinum/gvinum
because it offered more flexible read load-balancing (you can choose
between various policies) and easier recovery.  It can even do N-way
mirroring.

I tried atacontrol in the past, but could never get it to reconstruct
after a simulated failure.  With gmirror, you have the option of
automatic or manual reconstruction for failed/stale providers.

You might want to consider gvinum if you think you might want to use
RAID 5 or LVM-type aggregations in the future, but if you are just
planning on mirroring I'd strongly suggest going with gmirror.

Cheers,

Paul.
-- 
e-mail: paul at gromit.dlib.vt.edu

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