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(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