[TriLUG] Server Duplication... RFC

[Jason Tower]

md raid 1 has never given me a problem no matter how hard i hammer it, just 
raid 5.  so you should be fine.  good luck!

Brian Weaver wrote:
> 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
>> >
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> 
>