Svenstaro
October 23rd, 2008, 11:36 AM
Hi everybody,
so for me the time has finally come to upgrade my server to a bigger bugger. With HDD prices rapidly decreasing and storage sizes increasing, I decided to build myself a brand-new file server and media storage.
My current one is pretty much built from scrap components and runs a 4-year-old Debian system that has gone through all imaginable pain a Linux system could possibly take. I was pretty green back then and so I decided to take a clean approach this time.
My old system uses an LVM array which eventually reached a size of 1.5TB by adding and replacing hard disks over time. Since it's all IDE drives from different centuries it obviously doesn't yield the best performance.
For the new server I ordered 3x750GB SATA2 Samsung HDDs rated for 24/7 usage.
Basically, my question now is what kind of array I should form. I've got good experiences with LVM since it's quite easy to expand and recover failures but I was looking at a possibility to form a RAID to improve performance. I heard that RAIDs aren't easily expanded though and a bit of Googling didn't disprove that. It seems that LVM on-top of RAID is a common choice but I keep wondering why nobody just does an LVM2 with built-in striping. Is it unreliable or slow (or slower compared to RAID)?
Enlighten me please :)
so for me the time has finally come to upgrade my server to a bigger bugger. With HDD prices rapidly decreasing and storage sizes increasing, I decided to build myself a brand-new file server and media storage.
My current one is pretty much built from scrap components and runs a 4-year-old Debian system that has gone through all imaginable pain a Linux system could possibly take. I was pretty green back then and so I decided to take a clean approach this time.
My old system uses an LVM array which eventually reached a size of 1.5TB by adding and replacing hard disks over time. Since it's all IDE drives from different centuries it obviously doesn't yield the best performance.
For the new server I ordered 3x750GB SATA2 Samsung HDDs rated for 24/7 usage.
Basically, my question now is what kind of array I should form. I've got good experiences with LVM since it's quite easy to expand and recover failures but I was looking at a possibility to form a RAID to improve performance. I heard that RAIDs aren't easily expanded though and a bit of Googling didn't disprove that. It seems that LVM on-top of RAID is a common choice but I keep wondering why nobody just does an LVM2 with built-in striping. Is it unreliable or slow (or slower compared to RAID)?
Enlighten me please :)