[rescue] Re: Small RAID array setup

[Rip Loomis]

> The one thing to keep in mind about using hardware raid of any sort,
> is keeping a spare controller....  as if your controller dies, it
> stands directly between you and your data and no amount of RAID 0,
> RAID 0+1, or RAID 1+0 will help.

Actually, it's worse than that AFAIK:  One not only needs another
RAID controller handy (for hardware RAID) but also a readable backup
of the RAID config.  If my primary DAC960 crashed then I have another,
but I don't think I have a backup of the RAID config from the primary.
If I try to initialize a new DAC960 with the same 4 drives that already
have data on them, it will want to reformat them as a new (!) array.
This wouldn't be quite what I wanted at that point... 

 From what I can figure out in the Mylex docs (and other RAID
controllers I've played with are similar) that's the whole point of
allowing the RAID controller config to be backed up to a floppy.
Just a thought for anyone who's concerned enough to be looking at
getting a duplicate hardware RAID controller. 

So given the *BSD, Linux, and Solaris software RAID implementations
out there, has anyone had any luck with recovering such a system
after failure of the boot device (IOW, having to reconfigure software
RAID on the same/a different system and trying to recover data that
was in the software RAID array)?  I'm curious to know... 

 --
Rip Loomis, CISSP
Brainbench.com MVP for Internet Security   |   http://www.brainbench.com/