Using Software RAID-1 with FreeBSD
Linked by Eugenia Loli on Sat 12th Nov 2005 18:15 UTC, submitted by SQwerl
FreeBSD Have you ever needed a software RAID solution for a low-end server install? Perhaps you've wanted your workstation to take advantage of the redundancy provided by a disk mirror without investing in a hardware RAID controller. Has a prior painful configuration experience turned you off software RAID altogether on Unix systems? Read more at OnLamp.
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production
by jondoor on Sat 12th Nov 2005 19:25 UTC
jondoor
Member since:
2005-06-30

I have gmirror deployed in production. when I was setting up the servers I used it to replicate the install of the first machine to the others by simply swapping a drive over and rebuilding the mirror on each machine, it was very nice.

Edited 2005-11-12 19:27

Reply Score: 5

Software RAID?
by DittoBox on Sat 12th Nov 2005 21:35 UTC
DittoBox
Member since:
2005-07-08

I was told and have been under the impression that software RAID -regardless of platform- was a Bad Thing. Is this true?

Reply Score: 1

RE: Software RAID?
by jziegler on Sat 12th Nov 2005 22:23 UTC in reply to "Software RAID?"
jziegler Member since:
2005-07-14

No.

Reply Score: 1

RE[2]: Software RAID?
by jondoor on Sat 12th Nov 2005 23:03 UTC in reply to "Software RAID?"
jondoor Member since:
2005-06-30

Maybe it will provide less performance gains than a hardware solution. But then again hardware raid adds the controller as a point of failure and possible data loss, depending on the kind of controller.

With gmirror I was able to pull one of the drives from an active system, while compiling world, with only a momentary pause. That was in a two drive system so it was booted from the mirror volume.

Reply Score: 3

RE[3]: Software RAID?
by DittoBox on Sat 12th Nov 2005 23:17 UTC in reply to "RE[2]: Software RAID?"
DittoBox Member since:
2005-07-08

Ahh, I see. Thanks for the helpful reply.

Reply Score: 1

FreeBSD basics !
by ariel on Sat 12th Nov 2005 22:19 UTC
ariel
Member since:
2005-07-06

As always Dru Lavigne bring to us another COOL article, like many more in the past.

Reply Score: 2

BSD Hacks
by Charles A Landemaine on Sun 13th Nov 2005 02:41 UTC
Charles A Landemaine
Member since:
2005-11-11

Thanks Dru, one more good article ;)
Maybe a coincidence but I was looking for information on how to set up a Raid-1 configuration with FreeBSD a few days ago...

Anyway, I'd like to know if some one already read BSD Hacks from Dru, it looks interesting from the table of contents and the positive reviews I've seen here and there...

Reply Score: 2

gvinum
by dillee1 on Sun 13th Nov 2005 11:11 UTC
dillee1
Member since:
2005-08-10

Why is he using gmirror/gstrip? I thought mirroring and stripping function are supported by gvinum as well and it is supposed to be more advance....?

Reply Score: 2

RE: gvinum
by lapo on Mon 14th Nov 2005 17:07 UTC in reply to "gvinum"
lapo Member since:
2005-07-25

Probably because gmirror is dead simple and reliable while gvinum is complex and AFAIK still not up to the stability or command set of the old vinum.

I switched to gmirror back at 5.3 as vinum became deprecated and gvinum simply wasn't there yet.
gmirror has given me 0 problems in a production environment for the last year. (mirroring system drives on a 3 heavily loaded mail servers.)
Honestly, gmirror works very well so why not use it?

BTW, graid3 seems to also work quite nicely.

Reply Score: 2

another article in a similar vein
by dave on Mon 14th Nov 2005 14:11 UTC
dave
Member since:
2005-07-01

another article that covers much of the same ground is also available at freebsdwiki.net: http://www.freebsdwiki.net/index.php/RAID1%2C_Software%2C_H...

disclosure: I contribute and help maintain the freebsdwiki (although I didn't write that particular article)

Reply Score: 2

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