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  1. #1
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    Raid 1 - is it really needed

    I am now going to move from a vps to a dedicated server soon. My concern is if raid1 is really needed. What are the chances of having your hdd failing.

    I will be hosting a forum on this new server and my budget is very tight so I dont think if I can afford the raid 1 option offered by securedservers.

  2. #2
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    Raid 1 is needed to mitigate downtime for fast data recovery. Raid shouldn't be used as a backup service, but should be used for high availability. So yes, if you are worried about downtime due to hardware related issues, some sort of disk array with parity is probably necessary--raid 1 just happens to be the fastest way to rebuild the array (I think, not sure about raid 10).
    Last edited by phil29; 04-14-2011 at 01:35 AM.
    Respectfully,
    Phillip

  3. #3
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    Can you afford the downtime caused by a HDD failure? Software RAID1 is a pretty cheap solution - you really only have to pay for the secondary hard drive.

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by Orien View Post
    Can you afford the downtime caused by a HDD failure? Software RAID1 is a pretty cheap solution - you really only have to pay for the secondary hard drive.
    Actually, RAID 1 is the most expensive solution when you consider raid 5 and raid 10. Raid 5 and 10 can allow for HD failure without the need to devote the entire disk to redundancy--ie, they allow for greater storage capacity.
    Respectfully,
    Phillip

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by phil29 View Post
    Actually, RAID 1 is the most expensive solution when you consider raid 5 and raid 10. Raid 5 and 10 can allow for HD failure without the need to devote the entire disk to redundancy--ie, they allow for greater storage capacity.
    I was speaking more from a simple $ perspective rather than a $/GB perspective as it doesn't seem the OP needs more space. RAID 5 / 10 will cost more to implement.

  6. #6
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    With todays hardware prices it is cheaper to "waste" an extra HDD and go for RAID10 instead of sacrifice performance and go for RAID5. Besides for servers used mostly for web hosting HDD write performance is very important and RAID5 is not good...

    I am comparing a 3x HDD RAID5 with 4x HDD RAID10 here.

  7. #7
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    Since the OP is comparing no raid (i.e. 1 drive) to raid1 (assumed 2 drives) I'm not sure why we're even discussing raid5, raid10, etc... I mean sure - they're better from a performance and reliability standpoint than a set of two drives in raid1 but that's not really what has been asked.

    @OP: I would at the least go with Raid1 and do also have external backups - Raid1 is NOT A SUBSTITUTION FOR BACKUPS.
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  8. #8
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    If all you're running is a forum and you don't mind taking the time to restore backups (if the hdd crashes), then don't worry about using RAID. If it's a decent sized forum and you care about downtime, then go with RAID 1 as a safety measure and should a drive die, you'll be able to replace it quicker.

    Either way, always remember that hardware failure is unpredictable - even both drives can fail which is why you would also need to make sure you have some backups as well.
    Nothing here right now.

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by MattS View Post
    Either way, always remember that hardware failure is unpredictable - even both drives can fail which is why you would also need to make sure you have some backups as well.
    Or for the sake of example - your server becomes compromised and the hacker deletes all of your databases - this would mirror to both drives in Raid1 and without backups your data would be permanently lost.

    Raid + Backups is the best option if you care about reliability and data protection.
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  10. #10
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    To sum up all of this: use raid for high availability and off-site backups for redundancy. Redundancy is a must, raid is your call.
    Respectfully,
    Phillip

  11. #11
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    I guess i will have to up my budget for the RAID 1 as mike suggested.

    I am actually rsyncing my files to a remote server for backup every 30 minutes. And I use mysqldump to backup my database every midnight the only problem is sometimes mysqldump takes too long to finish. Does anyone here knows how to backup a large .mysql database faster?
    Last edited by HypeKoder; 04-14-2011 at 02:16 AM.

  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by jamjam View Post
    I guess i will have to up my budget for the RAID 1 as mike suggested.

    I am actually rsyncing my files to a remote server for backup every 30 minutes. And I use mysqldump to backup my database every midnight the only problem is sometimes mysqldump takes too long to finish. Does anyone here knows how to backup a large .mysql database faster?
    There is no good way to do it beyond mysqldump that I am aware of, short of rsyncing the database files themselves but those may or may not be reliable for restoration depending on how busy the database is.
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  13. #13
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    I'm not sure if you want it, but I recently made a script for rsync backups that automatically reconnects if there is a disconnect and continues the transfer. Let me know and I'll post it.
    Respectfully,
    Phillip

  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by phil29 View Post
    I'm not sure if you want it, but I recently made a script for rsync backups that automatically reconnects if there is a disconnect and continues the transfer. Let me know and I'll post it.
    Cool kindly post it here maybe I will use it over my current script. Thanks

  15. #15
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    Raid 1 is preferred as compared to normal HDD. Go for it
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  16. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by jamjam View Post
    I am actually rsyncing my files to a remote server for backup every 30 minutes. And I use mysqldump to backup my database every midnight the only problem is sometimes mysqldump takes too long to finish. Does anyone here knows how to backup a large .mysql database faster?
    R1Soft MySQL is the best way. Unfortunately not free though..

  17. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by jamjam View Post
    And I use mysqldump to backup my database every midnight the only problem is sometimes mysqldump takes too long to finish. Does anyone here knows how to backup a large .mysql database faster?
    If you have several large tables then you'd probably benefit from dumping each one individually. You might also want to look at mysqlhotcopy.
    Chris

    "Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them." - Laurence J. Peter

  18. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by RavC View Post
    R1Soft MySQL is the best way. Unfortunately not free though..
    This - definitely.

    Talk to your hosting provider about it. They should have some suitable backup options for you.

    Doing it via mysqldump / rsync is a bit inadequate! Also remember that slow backup implies slow restore as well. Obviously a slow backup restore beats no backup, but really you need to be able to restore as quickly as possible - so rsync from a slow remote network is a bit lame.

    Other point is that if you use a decent backup solution you can run more frequent backups. For example just lose 1 hour of posts instead of 1 day!

    An alternative you can consider/combine is to backup a replicated slave db instance.
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  19. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by foobic View Post
    If you have several large tables then you'd probably benefit from dumping each one individually.
    Sorry for the double post, but had to reply to this ...

    You might take your backup with less disruption this way, but it's a bad idea because you will end up with an inconsistent snapshot of your data.

    Imagine that you insert some rows of data into multiple tables, "joined" by a foreign key of course. You backup one of those tables before the insert, and another afterwards.

    Then you have some sort of disaster, and need to restore the entire database from backup.

    Now you have broken referential integrity within your database (orphaned records) - for example that might mean you have a user's posts but not the user account itself (so no username, password, email address etc. for that user). It's a big problem to deal with!

    Taking a backup isn't even half of the battle. You have to be able to successfully restore the backup or it doesn't mean a thing - successful meaning that everything works properly.
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  20. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by Layershift Damien View Post
    You might take your backup with less disruption this way, but it's a bad idea because you will end up with an inconsistent snapshot of your data.
    Yep, you're absolutely right. I didn't think that one through.

    Personally though, for my modest needs, I find mysqldump (on the entire database) works very well.
    Chris

    "Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them." - Laurence J. Peter

  21. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by RavC View Post
    R1Soft MySQL is the best way. Unfortunately not free though..
    The 2.0 version of the MySQL agent works wonderful however the 3.0 version takes around 5 to 10 seconds per table so it's ok for a small server with only a few sites databases but for a shared server of any real scale it's not really usable.

    We do use R1Soft + MySQL agent for our own site as it's the only site on the server and it does work well.
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  22. #22
    You can setup a cronjob to backup MySQL databases with rsync using:

    rsync -vrplogDtH /var/lib/mysql /home/MYSQL-BACKUP/

    and then before doing the restore, you can Check, Repair, and Optimize all databases using:

    mysqlcheck -Aor

    Just one way of going about it.
    Last edited by HostXNow; 04-14-2011 at 12:45 PM. Reason: typo
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  23. #23
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    Copying a live database that is currently being written to with rsync or whatever sounds like a bad idea to me. Better to mysqldump, compress the result and copy that.

  24. #24
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    If you are serious about MySQL backups you could setup replication just for the sake of backups (this requires at least one other server/VPS).

    Setting up replication (especially if all your tables are InnoDB) is really simple and (assuming the replication is working) you always have a copy of the database that is 100% up-to-date.

    To guard against hackers wiping your database (which will also get replicated!) you can (and should) also do regular mysqldump's on the backup replication slave (and because such a backup slave isn't serving any queries it doesn't matter if the backup slave then takes a few minutes to re-sync).
    .

  25. #25
    I doubt there would be much storage space being used just for a forum. Raid would be unnecessary if only a little storage space is being used. It doesn't take long to restore a cPanel account with a small forum.

    You could just setup WebHostManager to back up the cPanel account (includes emails, forum folders/files, databases, etc), + use a cronjob to copy the cPanel backups to an offsite backup account using rsync. It would only take a few minutes to rsync the cPanel account from the offsite backup account back to the live server and restore the forum.

    Raid does not cost that much extra though. If you can pay extra, get Raid too.
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