RAID 1+0

Tony Holmes tony at crosswinds.net
Fri Aug 22 07:17:04 PDT 2003


Just a quick question.

I've been running a couple servers using vinum's RAID 5. Last night
I had 2 of the disks in the RAID set drop dead (the first and last
physcial drives) killing all the data on the set. This is not the
first time I've lost all my RAID 5 data due to 2 disks dropping
in a very short period of time (this is the third time actually).

Thank god for backups.

I was particularly frustrated because I have been trying to find
a software solution to provide RAID 1+0 - striping of mirrored 
disks. Neither vinum nor ccd seem to support this and it would
be *amazing* if they could.

In the case of 2 disks dropping, I wouldn't have had any issues.
I would have had 1 mirror of each of the mirrored pairs drop
leaving the other mirrors up and striped (the first and last
disk being the lucky combo in my particular use).

In the case of RAID 5 and 0+1 (mirroring of stripes) I am dead
in the water with 2 disk failures.

Is there any intention of supporting this in any form?
(I'm currently running -STABLE). Would RaidFrame help?

If I have to move to a h/w controller then I will do it, I'm just
getting tired of defying the odds and losing my data and having
to restore :)

-- 
Tony Holmes

Founder and Senior Systems Architect
Crosswinds Internet Communications Inc.


More information about the freebsd-fs mailing list