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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Apr 2007
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    Finding out if a node has RAID?

    I have a few OpenVZ VPSes and I'm curious to know if there's any way to figure out if the node I'm on has any sort of raid setup?

    I've been browsing around and I've noticed that most providers claim their nodes are on some sort of raid setup, but there's really no way for me to actually verify this myself.

    Are there any programs which can check for a raid setup inside a openVZ container? And how can I test for the maximum read/write speed of my VPS?

  2. #2
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    Dec 2006
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    I think you are going to have to ask your hosting provider what the setup is. They would probably be honest with you, but make sure you get an answer from your technical support team and not your saleperson. sometimes the sales person is just not as informed as the technical staff / system administrators are. Sometimes a good backup done by yourself remotely would be a wise choice even IF the system has a RAID setup.
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  3. #3
    Join Date
    Apr 2009
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    To get a rough idea of your disk performance you can try hdparm. Run 'hdparm -tT /dev/sda1' adjust sda1 as required.

    Look at the 'buffered disk reads' value. You can find some results to compare with here and some interesting numbers in the comments here, and of course Google. In general if you're RAID'ed I would look for results >100MB/s, there will be a lot of variability between disks, controllers, and loads I suppose.
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  4. #4
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    Yup, I do daily offsite backups and I know raid isn't a backup solution. What I'm more concerned about is the IO speed of the VPS. For instance, one of my VPS sometimes has very high IO wait times just from hashing a big file even though they claim it's on raid 10. Could this be because my VPS is given a lower IO priority?

    And is there any way to determine how fast my VPS can read/write?

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Apr 2007
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    Calgary, Canada
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    Quote Originally Posted by RavC View Post
    To get a rough idea of your disk performance you can try hdparm. Run 'hdparm -tT /dev/sda1' adjust sda1 as required.

    Look at the 'buffered disk reads' value. You can find some results to compare with here and some interesting numbers in the comments here, and of course Google. In general if you're RAID'ed I would look for results >100MB/s, there will be a lot of variability between disks, controllers, and loads I suppose.
    Missed your post when I replied. I'll give that a shot. Thanks

    Edit: Unfortunately, it seems that I can't do that on an openVZ vps, since there's no real block device for me to use hdparm on.
    Last edited by Kohrar; 06-29-2009 at 05:14 PM.

  6. #6
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    Jun 2006
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    Cluj Napoca
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    If your provider has RAID there is a 99% chance he wrote that on his website.
    Almost any VPS provider, especially cheap VPS providers write on theire website if they have RAID (it's very good for marketing). If your provider does not state anything about RAID on his website then there is a 99% chance he does not have RAID at all.
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  7. #7
    Join Date
    Apr 2009
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kohrar View Post
    Edit: Unfortunately, it seems that I can't do that on an openVZ vps, since there's no real block device for me to use hdparm on.
    Ah sorry, my bad. You could try more traditional benchmarking software like for instance Unixbench-WHT (and look at the File I/O test scores) or bonnie++. Good luck!
    Exceptional VPS Hosting. With love, 6sync.

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Kohrar View Post
    Yup, I do daily offsite backups and I know raid isn't a backup solution. What I'm more concerned about is the IO speed of the VPS. For instance, one of my VPS sometimes has very high IO wait times just from hashing a big file even though they claim it's on raid 10. Could this be because my VPS is given a lower IO priority?

    And is there any way to determine how fast my VPS can read/write?
    The IO priority, unfortunately, can be a little consequence. At most, the highest priority can just afford twice the bandwidth of a VPS with the lowest possible priority, and the scheduler is rather inaccurate, so sometimes not even that.

    What generally affects IO bandwidth the most is, well, disc access by other VPSs on the same node.

    When asking if you node has discs on a RAID setup, specifically ask if it's hardware or software RAID.
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