[TriLUG-announce] Meeting: September 14, Rethinking RAID

[Brian Gerard]

Topic:     Rethinking RAID
Presenter: Dwain Sims
When:      Thursday, 14 September 2017 - 7:00pm to 9:00pm
Where:     NCSU College of Textiles, 1020 Main Campus Dr., Room 2207
Parking:   Underground parking deck immediately adjacent to the building
           (see map).

Links:
        Map:    https://goo.gl/SNVQgZ
        Page:   https://trilug.org/2017-09-14/rethinking-raid
        Meetup: https://www.meetup.com/trilug/events/242973463/

Note the venue - we are in our new location!

Summary
For those of us still configuring physical servers and storage, using RAID to
ensure the availability of storage is part of our everyday jobs. But things are
changing rapidly in the types of storage devices being used, as well as their
characteristics. Standard RAID techniques may carry consequences that solution
architects may not realize are present.

This talk will examine the beginnings of RAID, how we got to where we are at
now, and some of the issues that currently exist with RAID. Alternate techniques
(including open source solutions) can provide more resiliency with fewer
gotchas. There will also be a quick tutorial on "fio", the flexible I/O tester.

Bio
Dwain Sims has been working in the UNIX/Linux world for the last 30 years. He
started out using BSD UNIX on a PDP-11 while in Graduate School (West Virginia
University), and he has been hooked ever since.

Dwain has worked as a system admin and data center architect, product manager,
trainer, and as a Systems Engineer for various companies (including Sun
Microsystems and Fusion-io). He currently works for Western Digital / SanDisk /
HGST. (yes, he is confused at times!)

He has been working in the storage (mainly Flash) world for the last 5 years,
helping bring the storage revolution to the masses. He lives in North Raleigh
with his wife Cleo (of 28 years), 4 children (1 married and living in Charlotte
- a Nurse Practitioner, 2 at NC State, and one still living at home), and 5 hens.