Although there is a Thread on Raid topic, but i still have a doubt
___________________________________________________

Hi,

m planning to have a server with Raid5(3 X 40), Cpanel/Linux 7.3

what r the complications that i can have if i go along with this configurations and How should i partition the HDD, so that i can keep Daily Backups on one of the three drives. ?

thanks/-

You need all 3 drives for Raid 5, You could put a large IDE drive in for a backp drive..

More info:
http://www.storagereview.com/
http://www.tomshardware.com/

Has any one confiugured Raid5 on their servers and faced any problems so far and also keeps backup on the same machine ?.

Also "is it necessary to go for an extra drive? cant we just not use one of the partitions for backup purposes?




REgards

3 drives of the same size is the minimum requirement for RAID 5, you would not or could not use any of the RAID 5 drives for anything else. Using 4 or 5 drives is where RAID 5 starts to shine. If you were using only 3 drives and one of the drives fails your server would still be functioning but there would be a big performance hit. If you were to use 4 or 5 drives and a drive failed it would not run much slower.

As for as backups go the best solution it to not have them on the same server. If a hacker got access to you server all your data on that server is at risk, including your back-ups. If you did want to use another drive for back-up purposes, it could not be part of the RAID 5 array. You would need a separate SCSI or IDE drive for that.

You could just make a RAID Level 0 array out of 2 of the drives and use the 3rd for a back-up drive, but you would loose a lot of space.

Sitekeeper :-

Thanks for clearing my doubts, highly appreciate that.


regards/-