RAID Replacements

[choucove]

There is a recent discussion on the options and possibilities of using RAID mirroring or image based backup systems for computers, and I was wanting to discuss a little more specifically on what other peoples methods are to replace the function of RAID.

A little background on my situation. The last few years I haven't had a tremendous need to use RAID arrays often, but have had to use them on occasion, and each situation was pretty unique. However, as time went along, I began to notice that nearly every computer system that I had configured with RAID had, in one way or another, failed and NOT been recovered by the RAID properly. The first example was at our own sign shop where we had a RAID 10 configured on a separate controller card and at the time was running Fedora to host out files. When one of the hard drives failed, miraculously something happened with the RAID controller card and, while it still worked, it had lost all information of any previously configured arrays, meaning that our entire array was just gone. Fortunately, we were able to recover the data but it was complicated and expensive to do.

More recently, I've seen several computers in RAID 1 that have a hard drive fail and, while they continue to work until I get a replacement, I have to completely remove and then rebuild the array and then clone all the data over again to get the array going. In the worst case scenarios, I've seen several which have had part of Windows itself been corrupt due to RAID drivers or the controller. While Windows 7 might be able to easily do a startup repair if these were separate drives in AHCI or IDE, because they are in RAID it is simply impossible for Windows to fix it.

Have you seen similar things or had similar issues with RAID? What alternatives or replacements have you come up with to use on computer systems that need RAID-like functionality such as data redundancy? If you haven't had similar issues, are you using a high-end dedicated RAID controller card, or an onboard controller?

 

[Techman]

When I was big time into computer technical activities etc...
I found long ago that RAID was a bigger problem that it was worth just as you discovered.

This is exactly why I did not do RAID systems. The value and benefits just did not pan out. In my past experience there are few examples of any company or user actually needing a RAID.. If they did have a RAID there was even less using the system to its full potential. Then RAID seemed to fail more often than a standard SATA system. Likewise. those demanding a RAID were referred down the road.

The better alternative was..
A good old standard dual drive system with a good backup managment.
That included backups to different machines as well as a local drive. With three machines on a LAN there are 3 separate places to store local backups all controlled by proper management. Drives are cheap. Newer systems have plenty of room for dual or triple drives installed. A backup drive does not need to be the latest and fastest possible. Redundancy is fine. Anal retentive redundancy is obsessive behavior.

 

[Custom_Grafx]

I've been using Cobian since you suggested it to me, and been quite happy with it. It works well, doesn't interrupt me, and doesn't make my system lag at all.

Recently, I used Win7 back up to make an image of my C drive as well, as suggested by Signburst recently, and found that rather easy to execute, and am hoping it's easy to recover using it when/if the time comes.

Having a closer look at win7 back up, it looks pretty neat compared to the ms back up I used to use on my previous xp system, before starting to use cobian. I haven't look close enough, but I'm not sure if win7 BU has all the options of cobian like incrementals, and defining how often to make a full etc etc.

 

[Bobby H]

IMHO the vast majority of people don't need RAID. I think it's overkill for backup on a single computer. My work desktop machine has two internal hard discs, one for the OS and one for art files and Photoshop scratch disc use. I also have a 1 terabyte external hard disc attached with automatic backup software running.

RAID is justifiable in a server environment where lots of people need access to the data 24/7.

RAID is necessary in areas where data is being transferred at bandwidth/speeds well beyond the capability of a single hard disc to handle reliably. If you're doing really serious video editing work in HD quality or higher (2K, 4K) you may need a serious RAID setup among other things.

Most of us are creating still graphics and don't really need RAID to produce that work. Photoshop's scratch disc is best set on a separate physical hard disc apart from the HDD running the OS. I'm not sure when Photoshop started allowing it, but I know versions CS4 and CS5 can use external hard discs for scratch disc use. Obviously you want that disc connected via eSATA or USB 3.0. That gets the transfer speeds up to levels similar to the I/O speed of internal discs.

 

[njshorts]

I use RAID for our servers (Raid 10/5, preferably 10) and implement RAID solutions for high-availability operations... but for my own workstations here at the shop, we have our samba server that contains 100% of our data including clonezilla backups. All files for our shop are loaded onto storage volumes with perms set for each business unit, and mapped to the corresponding desktops. In the event of a drive failure, pop in a new HD, wait 15-20 mins for the clone to complete, resize the partition if the new drive is larger, and we're back up... It's cheaper and in cases of rebuilding, quicker.

The only server that I have that doesn't use RAID is the local server here at the shop. I have two volumes, one for storage/OS, the second for backup. The first drive rsyncs to the second hourly, and the data from the second is rsynced to a raid 10 box in our tampa dc. In the event of disk failure on the debian server here: first drive- reimage based on a clonezilla image stored on a usb stick, with all preferences/settings intact... just copy the data back over from the second drive. Second drive failure- install/format new drive, edit fstab to point to the new drive- let rsync run.

Fwiw, I create our images after a fresh install including all apps that are used on the machine, e-mail settings loaded, preferences set, etc. When we re-image on the new drive, all preferences/settings are intact. We use IMAP for all e-mail accounts, so e-mail simply syncs and we're back up just like nothing happened.

One pissing match I'd like to not start, but just to mention from my own personal experience (and EVERYONES is different)- I've had more issues and failures with adaptec raid cards than any other... For the last 3-4 years, all I've used is 3ware with amazing results... even in error-prone raid 5. If you havent tried 3ware, give em a shot.

This won't be the best solution for everyone, but works well for us and just might for you... also, it's insanely cheap and reliable

 

[SightLine]

Raid should never be considered as a backup. It is a tool for high availability and speed. Regardless it does provide for some security of your data depending on the raid level.

In my experience (coming from a prior 12 year IT career) you get what you pay for on a raid controller. Pretty much any raid controller under $150 or so and/or built in to motherboard controllers are junk. They are what are considered "software" controllers and the management of them is limited and not well done. Okay for a gamer but totally unaccceptable for business use where you value your data and uptime.

True enterprise business grade controllers will have battery backed cache on them, are generally configurable through the controllers BIOS, and will also have a properly made and extremely well tested application and drivers for Windows (or Linux/Unix) which can be used for additional configuration and monitoring of the controllers status and state. While even these may have the occasional software bug in a new driver - this is why enterprises like the major hospital I used to work for (and myself now) do not install the newest drivers/bios/firmware/or software as soon as it comes out. Best to let others try it for a while to see if people are experiencing any bugs. Pretty much the same reason I waited for several months before upgrading Adobe Creative Suite to version 5 or wait to upgrade Flexisign to version 10. Let others deal with the bugs - wait till something has proven itself....

Pretty much any of the many dozens of professional raid controllers I've worked with in the past worked excellent. You can pull a failed drive while Windows is still running, plug in the replacement and it will rebuild automatically on the fly. Or depending on how you have the controller configured you might just open the management application and tell it to rebuild. Zero downtime.

Of course with raid or even backup, neither helps in any way regarding corrupt files, viruses, etc. If you have a corrupted file or a virues the raid or backup will conveniently make a backup of the virus or corrupt file for you.

 

[choucove]

This has all been great information, and it seems like a lot of people are on the same thought about RAID systems.

For myself, the only time I use RAID currently is RAID 0 for speed (especially when using SSDs like in my home computer) and that's with the understanding anyways that nothing is redundant.

Recently I've been trying out a new method that I can use in place of using a RAID 1 array on something like a standard workstation computer. I will install two hard drives (usually Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATAIII hard drives) and set up two partitions on the primary hard drive; one for the OS and one for the data. Then you install your OS and all necessary programs and settings on the OS partition and transfer over the data you need onto the DATA partition.

Once you have the OS set and the programs you need all installed, I use Acronis to clone the entire primary hard drive now onto the second hard drive and set the boot order to boot first from the primary drive and then from the secondary hard drive. That way if the first hard drive fails, your still will still be able to boot up to the identical OS set up that's installed on the second hard drive, no need to switch any cables or anything.

That just leaves the data partition which needs to be updated regularly from the primary drive onto the secondary drive. For this, I use the utility Backup Magic. Set it to copy the entire source Data drive onto the destination Backup Data partition on the secondary hard drive twice a day. It works very fast and efficiently, and that way if your drive goes down your data is still backed up onto the secondary hard drive.

As SightLine pointed out, mission critical server systems are still going to call for something more powerful and complex like a dedicated RAID system than this above option, but for a workstation it so far has worked well.

 

[signswi]

RAID 5 for our fileserver, workstations aren't RAID but they get imaged frequently and all data lives on the fileserver (which is also cloud backed up). That's kind of the bare minimum imo.