Recommended RAID controller

[Bob Willcox]

On Tue, Jun 29, 2004 at 06:46:53PM -0600, Kenneth D. Merry wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 29, 2004 at 19:18:30 -0500, Bob Willcox wrote:
> > On Tue, Jun 29, 2004 at 04:52:01PM -0700, randall ehren wrote:
> > > > > on a side note, does anyone know if it's possible to initiate a RAID
> > > rebuild
> > > > > using these utilities? they seem to only allow the viewing or status,
> > > but
> > > > > not initiate any changes...
> > > >
> > > > I thougth that the rebuild would be initiated automatically when you
> > > > plug in the new drive. Is that not so?
> > > 
> > > nope. put a new drive in, can't reboot the machine until this weekend, been
> > > like this for about 36 hours now...
> > 
> > Bummer. Seems like that ought to be automatic.
> 
> Well, if you're writing the RAID controller firmware, you'll often want
> some user intervention prior to treating a newly inserted drive as a spare.
> 
> What if the user accidentally plugged the drive into the wrong SCSI (or
> SATA or FC or ATA) bus?
> 
> What if the user just wanted to treat the new drive as a volume, and put it
> on the controller so he could access it?
> 
> What if you have 2 (or more) failed arrays, how do you decide which array
> gets the spare?
> 
> You get the idea.  You want to ask the user before potentially overwriting
> his data.  There are probably some RAID boxes that do treat newly inserted
> drives as spares immediately, but you pretty much need some sort of
> standing policy on what to do with a "foreign" drive in that case.

Hmm, all good points. Guess I was thinking about this from the
standpoint of simple convenience and overlooking the risks. :-)

Bob

> 
> Ken
> -- 
> Kenneth Merry
> ken at kdm.org

-- 
Bob Willcox                   Serocki's Stricture:
bob at immure.com                  Marriage is always a bachelor's last option.
Austin, TX