[geeks] DiskSuite configuration suggestions

[Scott Howard]

On Thu, Feb 14, 2002 at 01:58:27AM -0600, Bill Bradford wrote:
> My question is - i've got the four 18G drives left.  Whats the best 
> software RAID level that I can use for a good balance of performance
> and reliability?  I first thought RAID-5, but then have read some 
> newsgroup posts that say it *sucks* with big drives/partitions...

Do NOT use software RAID-5.  Not only is the performance bad, but you
risk data loss unless you set up a log device (on another disk).

RAID 0+1 or 1+0 are the best.  1+0 under Disksuite is messy, and with only
2 disks on each side of the mirror probably not worth the trouble.

Your config will be something like :

d60 -m d40
d40	1 2	/dev/dsk/c2t0d0s0 /dev/dsk/c2t1d0s0
d50	1 2	/dev/dsk/c2t2d0s0 /dev/dsk/c2t3d0s0

Make sure you leave at least one slice with about 12+ megs free for state
databases.  (You won't need that much at the moment, but SVM in Solaris 9
uses 8192 blocks per copy, so for the usual 3 copies thats about 12 megs).

Of course, if you could get your hands on an A1000 controller for the box
it wouldn't be an issue... :)

  Scott.