SOFTWARE-RAID-TIPS (was: Adaptec 7890 and RAID portIII RAID controller Linux Support)

[Beau James]

--> dump/restore work on entire filesystems below the OS filesystem layer
--> (thus allowing a backup/restore without touching file access or
--> modification times, which is nice). That means it's not easy (or even
--> possible?) to back up less than the entire filesystem.

Got it.  That's a limitation of the Linux port of BSD dump; Solaris
dump accepts file lists which do not have to be complete partitions.

--> Combined with the fact that dump has no built-in compression

Though most tape drives have hardware compression these days.

--> and does
--> not handle multi-volume archives on Linux, it's not the most ideal
--> choice for backing up large RAID filesystems.

Ouch.  I'd not noticed that in the "BUGS" list, and hadn't overflowed
a tape (yet).

--> > With most reasonable-capacity tape drives these days, that seems like a
--> > small win.
--> 
--> What do you consider a reasonable capacity? I'm dealing with 30 GB
--> systems on a daily basis, and I don't consider that a particularly
--> large system (the administrators at our other offices work with 120 GB 
--> and larger filesystems). 100GB per tape would be a reasonable capacity
--> for me. Unfortunately, 100GB tape equipment is nowhere near reasonable
--> to purchase.

US$2.5K for 12/24 GB DAT; US$4.5 K for 140/280 GB DLT.  But "reasonable"
is in the eye of the buyer, of course.

Thanks,

Beau


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