[mythtv-users] Faster CPU and more RAM in SD frontend or backend?

Adolfo R. Brandes arbrandes at gmail.com
Tue Jun 3 10:59:59 UTC 2008


Kevin Kuphal wrote:
> Don't bother [using RAID-5].  Myth can use each drive independently
> (...) and I find the possibility of losing everything if the RAID
> array fails is far worse...

	I respectfully disagree.  These days, software RAID on Linux is 
simultaneously robust and flexible (which is more than you can say for 
hardware RAID).  I've been running 2 arrays (RAID-1 and RAID-5) for 
months, and they have survived the following:

1) Lightning strike (RAID-5)

	An electrical surge "stunned" one of the hds in the array,
essentially killing it.  I was able to take it out, fix it, and put it back
in the array without losing any data, AND with the backend running in
the meantime (very little downtime).

2) RAID expansion (RAID-5)

	Just last month I was able to stick in a new hd, expand the
RAID-5 array, extend the LV, AND extend the ext3 filesystem on top, all
with the backend online (except for the 10 minutes required to plug the
new hd in).  No failures whatsoever.  Talk about flexibility!

3) Flaky S3 (RAID-1)

	My frontend runs on software RAID-1, and I like to suspend it
instead of powering off.  However, kernel support for the Asus 
M2NPV-VM's ACPI is flaky at best, so occasionally the machine will hang 
on waking (the ugly kind of hang: no response at all from the system). 
I then need to hard-reset the box, which forces the driver to rebuild 
the array on the next boot.  Nevertheless, even after dozens of resets, 
I have yet to lose one tiny file on it.


	The conclusion is simply that I can vouch for sofware RAID on Linux.

Adolfo


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