<br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 12/20/05, <b class="gmail_sendername">Josh Trutwin</b> <<a href="mailto:josh@trutwins.homeip.net">josh@trutwins.homeip.net</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Questions:<br><br>1.) Does anyone have experiences they can share with setting up a s/w<br>RAID on an existing system? (Server is a Dell PowerEdge 1750 running<br>Debian sid with 2.4.32 - I build the kernel myself - it is currently
<br>co-located which might make remote setup interesting)</blockquote><div><br>I practiced that on a remote server (well, it was in the basement, and I wasn't) since I was considering doing it to rented dedicated server. After a couple of tries, I could do it reliably, reboots and all. IIRC, the instructions I started with were these:
<br><br> <a href="http://www.issociate.de/board/post/25205/How_to_build_bootable_RAID_1_as_a_module_with_Grub_on_Debian_Sarge.html">http://www.issociate.de/board/post/25205/How_to_build_bootable_RAID_1_as_a_module_with_Grub_on_Debian_Sarge.html
</a><br> </div>I partitioned differently which caused me a little heartburn (wrong argument to mkinitrd on my first tries.) Practice on a machine you can get to before doing it to a machine that is truly remote.<br><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
2.) We can have a maximum of 3 drives on the SCSI controller. I am<br>pushing to get two more drives matching the current drive. I was<br>going to use one as a scratch space / archive area and then use the<br>other to setup a software RAID. Sound ok or something better?
</blockquote><div><br>I'm not a pro, so my advice may not be worth anything, but I setup a PowerEdge 1550 that way and it worked fine.<br> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
3.) RAID-1 seems to be the right solution for this kind of setup (only<br>2 disks, exact same size)</blockquote><div><br>I don't think you need identical drives, though that makes it easier. If they're different sizes, size the md device to the smallest drive.
<br><br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">Any other suggestions / war stories are most welcome.</blockquote><div><br>
Keep a cheatsheet of mdadm commands around. Mine have worked and worked with *almost* no problems, but when something goes wrong, you want to minimize how long it takes you to relearn what you need to know to fix it.<br>
</div>Steve</div><br>