aal234 Posted January 27, 2006 Report Share Posted January 27, 2006 I have a basic two disk scsi windows 2003 server, was thinking of setting up software raid 9 no option for hardware raid on the controller) to mirror the main OS disk. Anyone had any experience good or bad of this? Or of software RAID in general? Also, as I have to convert the basic disks to dynamic ones to mirror them, does this affect how they are backed up? I am using veritas back execs IDR feature which works ok with basic disks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mook Posted January 27, 2006 Report Share Posted January 27, 2006 Don't touch software RAID - it eats into your processor performance. Use a PCI-66 based RAID card (if your server supports PCI-66, otherwise use PCI-33). You can pick these up from companies like www.adaptec.com or www.3ware.com for not a lot of money. The way the disks are set up in a mirrored, RAID 1 array makes no difference to the way the data is backed up - Veritas will see it as one drive. HTH Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aal234 Posted January 27, 2006 Author Report Share Posted January 27, 2006 Not an option I'm afraid its one of these crummy 1u servers so has no expansion, which is why I am lumped with software raid only. Any idea on the reliability of software raid? Its backed up using IDR at the moment and a full restore only takes an hour, I was just trying to figure out if it is worth running with one disk and simply restoring the image onto the spare if it dies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LukeX Posted January 27, 2006 Report Share Posted January 27, 2006 Plain and simple - software RAID is better than no RAID. As long as you're not running a busy server, the CPU overhead for RAID-1 won't cause you any trouble (especially with a SCSI setup). It's helped me out on many occasions. In your case I would say go for it - there's no real reason not to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sponge Posted January 27, 2006 Report Share Posted January 27, 2006 I hacked my installation of XP Pro to open up the RAID options. I've got 2 mirrored drives with an XP2200+ (1.8GHz) CPU. It runs ok, but can slow down sometimes. But it's not my main PC, I use it for downloads and streaming music/video/pictures to my xbox and for backups from my other 2 PCs, so I don't really notice it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frodo Posted January 27, 2006 Report Share Posted January 27, 2006 Who is the manufacturer? Both Dell and HP did plug in cards to upgrade standard SCSI to RAID even on Pizza boxes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sufu Posted January 27, 2006 Report Share Posted January 27, 2006 [ QUOTE ] Pizza boxes [/ QUOTE ] Love it! I always call them baking trays Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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