[XCSSA] Recommendations for a SAMBA/NAS device?

[X-otic Computer Systems of San Antonio]

On May 21, 2009, at 5:27 PM, X-otic Computer Systems of San Antonio  
wrote:

> On Thursday 21 May 2009, X-otic Computer Systems of San Antonio wrote:
> [Tim on SW RAID]
>> :) I've run it. It's actually pretty hot when used in the right  
>> context.
>>
>> Then again, there are times I wouldn't want to use it. But for a NAS,
>> particularly when using it with LVM, it's pretty neat. It can even do
>> RAID10 :)
>
> Actually.. I am a closet SW RAID person.. ;)  I run SW RAID-1 at  
> home on my
> myth (LVM on tom of SW-RAID-1 actually. :)  So SW RAID-1.. yeah..
> SW-RAID-10... I can see that on dedicated channels like SATA.. But  
> NEVER..
> NEVER do SW-RAID-5 on the same processor's that you boot and run a  
> system on.
> (and no.. processor affinity doesn't count either.. ;)

Aha! The truth comes out! I've only done SW RAID1. I try to avoid  
RAID5 as much as possible, although you bring up a good point that I  
want to make sure I understand. Are you suggesting not to run SW RAID5  
on /? Or are you suggesting to avoid using the same CPU that runs the  
system to also perform the RAID5 calculations?

If it's the OS, my ultimate goal is a SW RAID1 of CF cards :) But I  
think I'll settle for a single CF card and will just back it up  
elsewhere. It might not be a bad idea to RAID these guys. I see all  
sorts of negative reviews on NewEgg about someone getting burned by  
this. I suppose I could put LVM on top of the CF card, snapshot that,  
and then dump the FS onto another CF card. But now we're getting into  
really weird territory :) That and I don't believe in running LVM on  
the root file-system. In fact, I don't like running EXT3 on root  
either. I'd live with XFS, but I usually keep /boot to EXT2.

I suppose I could simply backup the CF card onto the storage drive  
(with the LVM + RAID goodness). Only problem is that, on a restore, I  
would need to login to a rescue environment and configure software  
RAID manually, then LVM (which should be stored in header information  
anyway) just to get the system image back.

That said, I could just backup to the Jungle :)

Anyways I went off on a tangent so I'll just stop here :)

Tim S.