[TriLUG] Server Duplication... RFC

[Brian Weaver]

Jason,

Thanks for the info.... Once I make a copy of everything then I may
just boot it up and let it work the bugs out... I just don't want to
loose all my e-mail and files.

As far as software raid, I'm not going to do RAID 5. I want to move to
a simpler setup using simply mirroring. Right now I have 4 x 60 GB
drives (well the replacement is an 80GB drive) for a total of 180 GB
of space.

I'd like to move to 2 x 400 or 2 x 500. Two drives and more than
double the disk space. I guess since most of my hardware is in the 5+
years old category I want to move to a more "mobile" solution in case
the 3ware card does fail.

-Brian

On 6/22/06, Jason Tower <jason at cerient.net> wrote:
> i got a bunch of those 3ware warnings on my arrays (9500 8 port) when i
> first assembled them too, once it initialized it was fine and has been
> running flawlessly ever since (about 8 months).
>
> also fwiw, i bought a 1u supermicro server this week (5013cmt) w/ 4x sata
> disks in it.  they work fine individually, even under high simultaneous
> throughput to multiple disks.  but it locks up hard if i create a md raid 5
> device and put it under any significant load (os was fc5).  sometimes it
> would even crash during mkfs.ext3.  so software raid isn't necessarily a
> panacea either.
>
> jason
>
> Brian Weaver wrote:
> > Hi All,
> >
> > So my main server at home that I used for just about everything has
> > experienced a problem with it's 3-ware array. I *think* the card *may*
> > be developing a problem, but I'm not sure. The newest drive in the
> > array which *appears* to work outside the array failed (it's status is
> > unverified, something I need to find out since it's still in
> > warranty). I put another spare drive of sufficient size and it allowed
> > the raid to rebuild, but when I went to write to the array I got
> > errors like:
> >
> > 3w-xxxx: scsi0: AEN: WARNING: Sector repair occurred: Port #3
> >
> > I'm getting LOTS of these warnings, which scares me quiet a bit. So
> > I've shut the box down until I can either replace it with 2 large
> > disks in a software raid or move the whole file system to a spare box
> > that I have.
> >
> >
> > In the interest of keeping my wallet in my pocket I was wanting to
> > move the whole thing to a box I already own, there is a question of
> > how though.
> >
> > The current server is a single core (750MHz athlon) system. The *new*
> > old server is a SMP athlon MP system. I don't want to gut or move any
> > hardware so are there any good suggestions on how to move my Debian
> > Sarge install from the failing system to the backup system. I'm not
> > worried about keeping the OS on the backup system.
> >
> > Here are my thoughts, help me refine it or at least find the problems
> > and trouble spots.
> >
> > 1) Boot the backup and primary server using a live OS like Knoppix or
> > the Debian Install disk in recover mode.
> >
> > 2) Repartition the backup root disk (hda) as necessary and format the
> > new file systems.
> >
> > 3) Boot the primary server into single user mode and start networking.
> >
> > 4) Rsync the primary file-system to the backup system
> >
> > 5) Use grub to install the bootloader on the backup system
> >
> > 6) modify /etc/fstab if necessary to reflect backup partitioning scheme
> >
> > 7) reboot and "watch it smoke(tm)"
> >
> > Normally I just install an OS from scratch and then copy the data that
> > I want. I don't plan on using the backup for the extended term, but
> > until I have sufficient funds to replace the 3ware raid5 array with
> > two large hard drives in a software mirror.
> >
> > anyone want to buy an old 4-port 3ware card? It's worked for me and it
> > may just be that the second disk I put in had issues of it's own. I
> > really don't know exactly what the issues is, but I don't have the
> > time to invest to find out what's wrong with it. I'm also of the mind
> > set to move to software raid now too. If the card were really to go
> > bad then I have no way to recover the information stored on the disks
> > because I don't know the layout used by the card. With Linux software
> > raid I can at least use the source to figure it out.
> >
> > Thanks for the help
> >
> > -Weave
> >
> --
> TriLUG mailing list        : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug
> TriLUG Organizational FAQ  : http://trilug.org/faq/
> TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/
>


-- 

/* insert witty comment here */