[lug] RAID installation on Fedora 6 Zod

[Sean Reifschneider]

On Thu, May 17, 2007 at 05:15:24PM -0600, Nate Duehr wrote:
>So I never disagreed with what you're saying -- I was simply offering to
>the original poster that there's always the option to do it right to begin
>with -- if that's what his real needs/desires are for his business.

The only solution that seems to meet your "better than Linux software RAID"
is NetApp, and somehow I can't imagine that $50k is an option for the
original poster.  Sure, for around $120 you can get a 2 port 3ware card
that will be pretty good, but the original poster would probably never set
up the RAID monitoring application and therefore may be worse off than
using the software RAID solutions.  Certainly, a $120 3ware card does not
make the Linux software RAID look atrocious...

>It's not as easy to borrow a friend's server when you land that big
>customer that forces you to sign an SLA.  So in the end, you end up paying
>now... or paying later... might as well buy top of the line technology vs.
>twiddling with something that's "close" and then having to buy top of the
>line later, anyway.

Absolutely not.  You are almost certainly better to start off with a "good
enough" solution up front and then gather experience with it and use that
as a basis for migration to a new platform down the line.  Creating a
solution based on actual operational experience, rather than guesses at
where the problems are going to be.

This is very similar, in my mind, to the problems with premature software
operation.  Sure, you can spend tons of time up front trying to guess where
the performance problems are going to be.  Or, you can put something out
now and gather real world experience and solve it again.  To quote a few
authorities: "Plan to throw the first one away" and "Premature optimization
is the root of all evil".

I've seen a number of businesses fail because of investing too much in the
top of the line solution, so the risk here is very real and very large.
Setting up a HA cluster when you don't even have an application let alone a
user is just plain and simple not going to help anything, for example.

So, go ahead and start off with something that's "close" and buy something
that's top of the line when you actually need it.  Because then,
presumably, you will *KNOW* what you need.

Sean
-- 
 If I were an Indian, my name would be "Running With No Swap".
                 -- Sean Reifschneider, 1999
Sean Reifschneider, Member of Technical Staff <jafo at tummy.com>
tummy.com, ltd. - Linux Consulting since 1995: Ask me about High Availability