From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Mar 14 21:48:27 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 39D7037B401 for ; Fri, 14 Mar 2003 21:48:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from smtp0.adl1.internode.on.net (smtp0.adl1.internode.on.net [203.16.214.194]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 13C7743F85 for ; Fri, 14 Mar 2003 21:48:25 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from Malcolm.Kay@internode.on.net) Received: from beta.home (ppp598.sa.padsl.internode.on.net [150.101.246.85]) by smtp0.adl1.internode.on.net (8.12.4/8.12.4) with ESMTP id h2F5mN2c062193 for ; Sat, 15 Mar 2003 16:18:23 +1030 (CST) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" From: Malcolm Kay Organization: At home To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: vinum based system Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 16:23:03 +1030 User-Agent: KMail/1.4.3 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Message-Id: <200303151623.03287.Malcolm.Kay@internode.on.net> Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG I am planning to put up a FreeBSD system, probably 4.8-RELEASE when it appears, to manage backups from a number of Unix and unix-like systems on a LAN.=20 Backups will be written nightly over the LAN to a local disk system and=20 transfered regularly to tape via a scsi tape-drive. I am under pressure to make this system fairly reliable with respect to hardware failure - particularly disk drives. The thought is to use a c= ouple=20 of fairly large drives, say 120 or 160Gb running as a mirrored pair using vinum. Having no experience with vinum or software RAID systems a number=20 of questions come to mind: 1) All the examples appear to use scsi drives; but I assume EIDE are also= =20 usable? IDE seems to be pretty good these days and much cheaper than scsi= =2E=20 2)To what extent can the system be fully mirrored? Without RAID hardware = it seems to me that a conventional disk partition outside the mirrored volum= e is=20 probably necessary for mounting / ; is this true? 3)If the regular partition is necessary can this be taken as a modest sli= ce=20 from one of the disks whose major part is devoted to the mirror volume, and perhaps the corresponding slice on the other used for swap? 4)If the converse is true that the entire system can reside inside the=20 mirrored volume then do I need a temporary additional disk to build the=20 system? In any case it seems that an outside region or separate physical disk would be better for swap. Are there any RAID/vinum gurus out there that are willing to point me in = the=20 right direction? Malcolm Kay To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message