Hi Folks, I recently ran across an interesting situation that I wanted to share this group. A customer of ours called us, letting us know that our server in their data center was beeping. We tried to ssh into the box, but kept getting connection refused. I asked the customer to hook up a monitor and keyboard to the box, and try a simple TTY. Sure enough, he was unable to log in. It turns out that the hard drive that holds the OS (Crux Linux) failed. Now, that in and of itself is not very interesting. What is interesting is that our software kept running even without the OS drive functioning. Our software resides on a separate drive. Since it was already loaded into memory and almost never needs to touch the OS drive, it just kept going.and going..and going.. Tal
Tal> Sure enough, he was unable to log in. It turns out that the hard Tal> drive that holds the OS (Crux Linux) failed. You don't have your disks mirrored? I'm surprised! John
It was just the OS, not the data disk (the data disk is a 3 disk Raid 5 array). :) Tal -----Original Message----- From: wlug-bounces@mail.wlug.org [mailto:wlug-bounces@mail.wlug.org] On Behalf Of John Stoffel Sent: Saturday, April 28, 2007 9:32 AM To: Worcester Linux Users Group Subject: Re: [Wlug] I'd like to see Windows do this.... Tal> Sure enough, he was unable to log in. It turns out that the hard Tal> drive that holds the OS (Crux Linux) failed. You don't have your disks mirrored? I'm surprised! John _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug@mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug
Tal> It was just the OS, not the data disk (the data disk is a 3 disk Tal> Raid 5 array). Again, If you've bothered to use RAID on your data, why not on the OS as well? It's not like the OS is all that big space wise, so it's cheap to mirror. And not always will the system (unix or otherwise) fail so nicely. You were lucky in my book. :] John
I agree that we were lucky; we did not design the system to run crippled - I just thought that it was cool that it did :) Do not get me wrong, I do not have anything against Windows...I just really do not think it would have died so chivalrously. I agree with you that the OS should be on the RAID array. This was one of the lessons learned from this event. Tal -----Original Message----- From: wlug-bounces@mail.wlug.org [mailto:wlug-bounces@mail.wlug.org] On Behalf Of John Stoffel Sent: Saturday, April 28, 2007 4:07 PM To: Worcester Linux Users Group Subject: Re: [Wlug] I'd like to see Windows do this.... Tal> It was just the OS, not the data disk (the data disk is a 3 disk Tal> Raid 5 array). Again, If you've bothered to use RAID on your data, why not on the OS as well? It's not like the OS is all that big space wise, so it's cheap to mirror. And not always will the system (unix or otherwise) fail so nicely. You were lucky in my book. :] John _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug@mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug
On Sunday 29 April 2007 22:08, Tal Cohen wrote:
I agree that we were lucky; we did not design the system to run crippled - I just thought that it was cool that it did :) Do not get me wrong, I do not have anything against Windows...I just really do not think it would have died so chivalrously.
I agree with you that the OS should be on the RAID array. This was one of the lessons learned from this event. Make sure you learn the lesson right. You could use Raid for the OS but not the same raid. Personally I am more of a hot spare os drive myself, but if you want to use RAID you don't want to be at the mercy of the OS installer Ms, Linux, or otherwise to keep your data safe in the case of an upgrade or reinstall. My philosophy is to keep the OS and data physcailly seperate for ciritical data.
Just my 2 cents Thanks Brian
Tal
-----Original Message----- From: wlug-bounces@mail.wlug.org [mailto:wlug-bounces@mail.wlug.org] On Behalf Of John Stoffel Sent: Saturday, April 28, 2007 4:07 PM To: Worcester Linux Users Group Subject: Re: [Wlug] I'd like to see Windows do this....
Tal> It was just the OS, not the data disk (the data disk is a 3 disk Tal> Raid 5 array).
Again, If you've bothered to use RAID on your data, why not on the OS as well? It's not like the OS is all that big space wise, so it's cheap to mirror.
And not always will the system (unix or otherwise) fail so nicely. You were lucky in my book. :]
John _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug@mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug
_______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug@mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug
participants (3)
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Brian Waite -
John Stoffel -
Tal Cohen