Re: [squid-users] RAID is good

Kinkie wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 3:30 PM, Marcus Kool
> <marcus.kool@urlfilterdb.com> wrote:
>> The point of why I started the discussion is that the statement in the wiki
>> "Do not use RAID under any circumstances" is at least outdated.
>
> Well, it says: "Don't". Agreed, it's a bit radical. You're welcome to
> edit the wiki if you wish, just let me know your wiki username so that
> I may give you write access.

OK, I am willing to to the edit and also include the VRRP/JBOC as an alternative.
My Wiki name is "Marcus Kool".

>> Most companies will trade in performance for reliability because they depend
>> on internet access for their business and cannot afford to have 2-48 hours
>> of unavailability.
>
> I'm not going to argue with that. The point is that usually there are
> more cost-effective ways to get the same level of reliability if not
> more.
> For instance, going JBOC (Just a Bunch Of Caches) with
> load-balancing/high-availability mechanisms (Proxy PAC/WPAD or Linux
> Virtual Server with or without VRRP or any other Layer 2-4 load
> balancing solution) is a very effective system to get very high
> reliability.
>
>> Everybody knows that EMC and HP systems are much more expensive than
>> a JBOD but this is not a valid reason to say "Never use RAID".
>> "Never use RAID" implies that RAID is *BAD* which is simply not true.
>>
>> From my point of view, the wiki should say something like:
>>
>> If you want cheapest, modest performance, with no availability guarantees use JBOD.
>> If you want cheap, modest performance and availability use RAID1/RIAD5 without
>> a sophisticated disk array (preferably with a RAID card that has
>> 128+ MB battery-backed write cache).
>> If you want cheapest availability use RAID5 without a sophisticated disk array
>> If you want expensive extreme performance and availability use a sophisticated disk array.
>
> Agreed, it can be improved. The point that should be driven across is
> that rather than spending 1kEur for a HW RAID SCSI Controller + 5KEur
> for the disks to go with it, it's much more cost-effective to spend
> 2KEur for a second server and use VRRP.
>
Received on Wed Mar 26 2008 - 10:04:57 MDT