(Chiming in because storage and OS nerding)
Given the use case (safety > perf), perhaps the route server storage would be best matched by something like a sync-mounted file system, raid1 with no cache enabled, or read cache only with a forced write-through?
A pair of SLC-type SSD's with ext3/4, or XFS mounted 'sync' atop a write-through raid1 should still be entirely awesome and performant for the job of booting an OS and loading route-server binaries, and perhaps even soaking up a few syslog outputs...while being as 'safe' as the hardware allows.
If that sounds tempting, tell me where to fedex the ssd media & caddy adapters :)
-Tk
> On Mar 27, 2015, at 1:26 AM, Doug McIntyre <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 06:24:03PM -0500, Brady Kittel wrote:
>> As an alternate option I have several HP dl380 g7's that are maybe a year
>> old and still under warranty I could provide. They have licensed ILO on
>> them as well and I could provide some hot spare drives for them.
>
> I think with the current PE R320 and PE R805, that we are probably set, but
> thank you for your offer. The R320 is a pretty new box, hmm, pulling the
> serial # and going to Dell, it looks like it is only 16 months old. Jeff
> mentioned they had some more coming out of cycle, and that people were looking
> to get a hot spare at the UG meeting?
>
> I think the specific problem I was seeing with the old hardware was
> due to a very specific configuration. With the PERC6/i battery backed
> up RAID controller, and some combination due to the age of the battery,
> and that specific design, which periodically (every 2-3 months or so) does
> a deep drain and charge cycle on the battery to make sure it can hold its'
> intended charge for the writeback log, during this cycle it switches the
> writeback log off and then on again, and sometimes the OS glitches on this
> sudden change in disk latency. My guess is the batteries were below a certain
> threshold point that exacerbated the writelog switchover, since we have been
> running on the same hardware for quite some time without issues, but not
> below the threshold which would alert the BCM on the RAID battery being bad.
>
> Both of these new systems do not have a battery backed up RAID system, which
> really isn't needed in this use case anyway, and are newer hardware, which I
> think would serve us well.
>
> I have both inhouse, with the OS installed, I just have to copy the configs back over,
> which I can get done pretty quickly, as it isn't extensive, and haul them down
> to 511. I'll have to schedule up some sort of switchout time, how much lead time
> would a graceful changeout of the hardware be required?
>
> --
> Doug McIntyre <[log in to unmask]>
> ~.~ ipHouse ~.~
> Network Engineer/Provisioning/Jack of all Trades
|