From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from lists.gentoo.org (unknown [208.92.234.80]) by finch.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 94EE41381FA for ; Tue, 27 May 2014 22:13:52 +0000 (UTC) Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id BFFC6E0870; Tue, 27 May 2014 22:13:50 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-pb0-f43.google.com (mail-pb0-f43.google.com [209.85.160.43]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-RC4-SHA (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 09053E0815 for ; Tue, 27 May 2014 22:13:49 +0000 (UTC) Received: by mail-pb0-f43.google.com with SMTP id up15so9948388pbc.16 for ; Tue, 27 May 2014 15:13:48 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=mime-version:date:message-id:subject:from:to:content-type; bh=83mtqqsQ/SfuUveD3QiRkzmy9vtuCQA4XuZlrQZ3vlE=; b=EvnOzFfBSDzwpUruTpab7uMsNlxvT0S2Gew8fqDZM8CyBaZ7Kt3aum/Prtkahh9sgK VLvwhWWQx5ubQn9b1iroKeGX/HMbK0lyzL7s6wEKQ5llPwcxny7C/+Bt8V5AYUbV4wTP iOlYjYJ1q2I1q81B6OYe6cZ+eCLb7vW19s1ZfHYSr9A6TTH8VC/CFeAVw3EGOJ2Jp9Lw Z24K2tiRssIop3l+D1Y8YXhRRiETitNNy3aX6agmMpU8DBrqZ3T4jQNkzwlS5k/XWXPq Sb31Bit6QPOR7VDX+sSCOK6jsL5QJtmiBQIT/72ZxN7s/mGEE1/M0oP6eEVWPn2eggDR VQzQ== Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-amd64@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-amd64@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Received: by 10.66.164.5 with SMTP id ym5mr41392128pab.50.1401228828916; Tue, 27 May 2014 15:13:48 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.70.25.99 with HTTP; Tue, 27 May 2014 15:13:48 -0700 (PDT) Date: Tue, 27 May 2014 15:13:48 -0700 Message-ID: Subject: [gentoo-amd64] Soliciting new RAID ideas From: Mark Knecht To: Gentoo AMD64 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 X-Archives-Salt: 0649e8e3-4626-4f71-b19f-4d3fc9cd8efd X-Archives-Hash: 8fedf194b88e2000c6e5b77cb1fa4ae8 Hi all, The list is quiet. Please excuse me waking it up. (Or trying to...) ;-) I'm at the point where I'm a few months from running out of disk space on my RAID6 so I'm considering how to move forward. I thought I'd check in here and get any ideas folks have. Thanks in advance. The system is a Gentoo 64-bit, mostly stable, using a i7-980x Extreme Edition processor with 24GB DRAM. Large chassis, 6 removable HD bays, room for 6 other drives, a large power supply. The disk subsystem is a 1.4TB RAID6 built from five SATA2 500GB WD RAID-Edition 3 drives. The RAID has not had a single glitch in the 4+ years I've used this machine. Generally there are 4 classes of data on the RAID: 1) Gentoo (obviously), configs backed up every weekend. I plan to rebuild from scratch using existing configs if there's a failure. Being down for a couple of days is not an issue. 2) VMs - about 300GB. Loaded every morning, stopped & saved every night, backed up every weekend. 3) Financial data - lots of it - stocks, futures, options, etc. Performance requirements are pretty low. Backed up every weekend. 4) Video files - backed up to a different location than items 1/2/3 whenever there are changes After eclean-dist/eclean-pkg I'm down to about 80GB free and this will fill up in 3-6 months so it's time to make some changes. My thoughts: 1) Buy three (or even just two) 5400 RPM 3TB WD Red drives and go with RAID1. This would use the internal SATA2 ports so it wouldn't be the highest performance but likely a lot better than my SATA2 RAID6. 2) Buy two 7200 RPM 3TB WD Red drives and an LSI logic hardware RAID controller. This would be SATA3 so probably way more performance than I have now. MUCH more expensive though. 3) #1 + an SSD. I have an unused 120GB SSD so I could get another, make a 2-disk RAID1, put Gentoo on that and everything else on the newer 3TB drives. More complex, probably lower reliability and I'm not sure I gain much. Beyond this I need to talk file system types. I'm fat dumb and happy with Ext4 and don't really relish dealing with new stuff but now's the time to at least look. Anyway, that's the basic outline. Any thoughts, ideas, corrections, expansions, etc., I'm very interested in talking about. Cheers, Mark