Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!


How important it is to have RAID 10 set up on your VPS?
New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.

All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.

How important it is to have RAID 10 set up on your VPS?

zhuanyizhuanyi Member
edited February 2013 in General

Recently in an effort to push the prices even lower, I noticed quite a few providers start to use non-RAID 10 for RAID, particularly the most recent OVH BHS offers.

I am just wondering how much do people care about having RAID 10 compare to other RAID (say RAID 1 or 0, especially RAID 0 since that means if any of the hard drive fails, the whole system fails)

«13

Comments

  • I see RAID10 becoming a marketing tool.

    I see it as we need reliable and fast RAID.

    e.g. RAID1 SSD would probably be faster than RAID10 HDD, so there shouldn't any hard fast rules.

  • I wonder how people would feel about single SSD with included backups..

  • Maybe Raid 10 is more for provider peace of mind?

  • DamianDamian Member
    edited February 2013

    Software RAID 1 will still be plagued by mdadm psychotically checking itself at the worst time possible. Hardware RAID 1 will still need a RAID controller, and 512gb SSD drives are $400. Granted, HW RAID0/1 controllers are cheaper than controllers that do 5/10, but for less than $800 I can buy 4x 1tb RE4 or 8x MK1002TSKB. Most of our nodes hold between 500gb and 1000gb of data, so 512gb drives aren't going to cut it for us; YMMV of course.

  • You people think "what if" to much, RAID 10 already is marketing garbage, but anyone who buys that is an Idiot.

    RAID isn't a substitute for backups, period.

  • @Jacob said: RAID isn't a substitute for backups, period.

    True. However RAID is a substitute for "please wait 10 hours until we reinstall the server and then restore your backups", instead of this you get "just hotswap that failed drive and go on as if nothing happened".

  • @GetKVM_Ash said: I wonder how people would feel about single SSD with included backups..

    Single SSD (or something that 'feels' like it) seems to work for DigitalOcean...

  • @rds100 I have to agree. RAID is just one tool used to make recovery time faster depending on the situation. Backups are a tool used to have an off-site copy of your information.

    RAID won’t help you if the datacentre burns down. A backup would.

  • Raid is not a backup, and rebuilding arrays = downtime, so for hosting I'd rather NOT have it

  • Awmusic12635Awmusic12635 Member, Host Rep

    @texteditor rebuilding arrays also = you still have all if not most your data intact

  • DamianDamian Member
    edited February 2013

    TBH, does anyone really rely on RAID as a backup solution? We use RAID 10 to be able to get reasonable disk iops and speeds out of cheapy drives; we have true backup systems in place for data redundancy. I thought that most (all?) hosts were using it for the same reasons, else we'd all be using RAID 5/6.

  • InfinityInfinity Member, Host Rep

    @texteditor said: Raid is not a backup, and rebuilding arrays = downtime, so for hosting I'd rather NOT have it

    Restoring backup = downtime too. I don't see where you are getting at.

  • mikhomikho Member, Host Rep

    Like many already stated Raid is not a backup but its for the piece of mind.
    If setup in a proper way theres little to none problems that requires you immediate response.

    The raid level should be chosen with a lot of thought and as long as the provider is open with the chosen solution used, the client is free to use the service or not.

  • Awmusic12635Awmusic12635 Member, Host Rep

    @Damian Use it mainly for speed here as well. Use Bacula4Hosts every 6 hours for our backup solution. Not sure there would be any reason to use it as backup unless the host is really cheaping out.

  • JacobJacob Member
    edited February 2013

    Just btw, rebuilding arrays does not cause downtime, people shouldn't even be using servers for production without hotswap bays. That's like a bare minimum requirement to have.

    @texteditor said: rebuilding arrays = downtime

  • DomainBopDomainBop Member
    edited February 2013

    "I am just wondering how much do people care about having RAID 10 compare to other RAID (say RAID 1 or 0"

    I think the technical proficiency level of the host is far more important than the raid level deployed by the host. If you put a raid 10 setup in the hands of someone with limited knowledge of servers, virtualization, Linux, etc (i.e. the (summer) hosts asking here or on WHT: how do I install solus, how do I use mdadm, etc, etc,) you stand a far greater risk of disaster than you would with a raid 0 setup in the hands of a technically experienced host

    "RAID isn't a substitute for backups, period."

    multiple +1's

  • CoreyCorey Member
    edited February 2013

    @Jacob said: Just btw, rebuilding arrays does not cause downtime, people shouldn't even be using servers for production without hotswap bays. That's like a bare minimum requirement to have.

    @Jacob said: You people think "what if" to much, RAID 10 already is marketing garbage, but anyone who buys that is an Idiot.

    RAID isn't a substitute for backups, period.

    Care to back up your claims?

    What does hotswap bays have to do with anything......... not that much more difficult to crack open a case and do the same thing you were already going to do with the hot swap bay..... take the drive out and put another in (granted I love hotswap bays because I dont have to crack open the box)

    Raid10 is marketing garbage? Much like @Damian said a lot of us use it to get massive and fast storage out of cheap drives instead of spending high XXX or even mid XXXX to get the same with a single ssd or multiple ssds that have their own caveats.

  • @Damian said: Software RAID 1 will still be plagued by mdadm psychotically checking itself at the worst time possible.

    What are you talking about?

  • @Microlinux said: @Damian said: Software RAID 1 will still be plagued by mdadm psychotically checking itself at the worst time possible.

    In my experience software RAID runs fine once its synced up initially.

  • @Corey said: Raid10 is marketing garbage? Much like @Damian said a lot of us use it to get massive and fast storage out of cheap drives instead of spending high XXX or even mid XXXX to get the same with a single ssd or multiple ssds that have their own caveats.

    Well said.

  • Raid-1 HW is not enough and is not playing good. Proven. Raid-10 with 4 or more drives is the minimum. Of course if you expect some performance and quality. We never tried Raid-1 software or hardware with KVM virtualization.

  • @qhoster said: We never tried Raid-1 software or hardware with KVM virtualization.

    Its not too clever, although would be fine on smaller nodes with real world usage if people weren't seeking 180MB/s DD results :P

  • JacobJacob Member
    edited February 2013

    @Corey The fact that you're suggesting removing the cables from a spinning disk, and in a case that is most likely a tight squeeze is just... I don't always swap drives purely because they are faulty, or defected.

    My comment didn't involve claims, It's common sense for a production enviroment.

  • risharderisharde Patron Provider, Veteran

    Im not a provider nor do i claim to be as good as you guys so i have to admit that sometimes I consider my sw raid 1s as backup. With that being said I do agree that backups are theoretically different in the sense that its added on to the peace of mind of having raid in the first place perhaps like a secondary fail safe. I also have to admit that the reason i sometimes think of the raid as a backup is because I perhaps have never had two drives fail at once or in near succession. As for performance, sw raid 1 sucks though.

  • risharderisharde Patron Provider, Veteran
    edited February 2013

    What confuses me though is how ever so often a provider has raid 10 and somehow loses the data on a node.. So personally when i see raid 10 from a provider it means very little towards my peace of mind as a customer, i still make external backups of critical data. When I see raid 0 from a povider, i get fully alarmed and dont consider the offer though, that is just me, everyone is different

  • @risharde I remember when we lost a RAID 10 array due to the tech replacing multiple drives at once, corrupting it.

    Other things that may cause data loss is power cuts, resulting in a fsck, then there is a possibility that it can lead to more failures.

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    I find that the biggest question is often "How cheap can I get out of this?"

    Things become standards for a reason, and you can rationalize to your hearts content, but later you'll wish you had exactly what you convinced yourself you didn't need.

    Just my 2 cents.

  • risharderisharde Patron Provider, Veteran

    I really miss the thanks button, thanks @jacob for opening my eyes little more to the causes, much appreciated. Dont want to derail but sometimes I wonder if fsck is evil lol

  • risharderisharde Patron Provider, Veteran

    @Jarland that is an excellent point

  • Nick_ANick_A Member, Top Host, Host Rep

    @Jacob said: You people think "what if" to much, RAID 10 already is marketing garbage, but anyone who buys that is an Idiot.

    Am I right in understanding that you just called people who buy RAID10 VPSs for the RAID10 idiots?

Sign In or Register to comment.