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Date:      Fri, 11 Sep 1998 12:42:48 +0930
From:      Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
To:        Mike Tancsa <mike@sentex.net>
Cc:        questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: vinum (was Re: Software RAID)
Message-ID:  <19980911124248.B611@freebie.lemis.com>
In-Reply-To: <35f8906d.173923869@mail.sentex.net>; from Mike Tancsa on Fri, Sep 11, 1998 at 02:59:35AM %2B0000
References:  <19980910095452.K583@freebie.lemis.com> <35f8906d.173923869@mail.sentex.net>

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On Friday, 11 September 1998 at  2:59:35 +0000, Mike Tancsa wrote:
> On Thu, 10 Sep 1998 09:54:52 +0930, in sentex.lists.freebsd.questions
> you wrote:
>
>> On Thursday, 10 September 1998 at  0:16:29 +0000, Mike Tancsa wrote:
>>> On Wed, 9 Sep 1998 18:27:49 +0930, in sentex.lists.freebsd.questions
>>> you wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Tuesday,  8 September 1998 at  1:37:49 +0000, Mike Tancsa wrote:
>>>>> On Mon, 07 Sep 1998 23:22:05 +0100, in sentex.lists.freebsd.questions
>>>>> you wrote:
>>>> Vinum will replace ccd.
>>>
>>> Would you say its ready for prime time in for example a new server
>>> environment ?
>>
>> Good question.  The current state is still "alpha", and there's a lot
>> of stuff that still needs to be written, and other parts haven't been
>> tested to my satisfaction: for example, I'm not convinced that
>> recovering defective volumes on line works correctly in all cases.
>> It compares favourably to ccd, though: in ccd, if a you have a drive
>> failure, you have to modify your ccd config and reboot before you can
>> access a mirrored pair again.  Vinum handles this transparently.
>
> Alpha,beta, release code are all relative terms... Working both in the
> NT world where "release code" is closer to a lot of 'beta' code in the
> FreeBSD world, I am willing to try :-)

:-)

>> As far as reliability goes, a number of people have been using it
>> heavily for a month now, and I haven't had any problem reports in that
>> time (I *have* had reports of "works fine, no problems").
>
> The main use would be on my news server spool... Although a real drag
> if the spool barfs, its not really the end of the world since it
> doesnt take long to fill up the drives again.  I guess my main issue
> is that if I do hit a bad sector, do I have to blow away the whole
> spool ?

That shouldn't be a problem.  As I said, you may have one process die
on you.

>>> Also, on my news server I have a few drives that are of different
>>> make and model.  Last time I looked at ccd it was not reccomended to
>>> try and stripe drives of different sizes and performance specs.
>>
>> Hmm.  I can't think why not.
>
> I dont recall the reasons either, but that generally seemed to be the
> consensus looking through old threads on ccd configuration and news
> servers from last year.

Possibly ideas from people who didn't know the details too well.

>>> Also, how well does vinum cope with disk errors.  I have one fuji
>>> thats somewhat prone to them...
>>
> .
> .
>> this problem, but due to the kernel structure it's relatively complex.
>> I'd expect it to be in by the end of the year, though.
>
> Hmmm.. I might wait a bit... Although not optimal, my multiple
> partition schemes seem to do the job for now.  When I add another 8
> gig drive to the new one I just added last week, I will perhaps try it
> then as there should not be any errors on these 2 drives any time
> soon.

It'll still be better than any alternative.  What happens is that one
process runs into trouble and dies.  At the same time, Vinum notes
that there's a problem and marks the subdisk down.  From then on, it
doesn't try to use that subdisk again.

Greg
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