Question about what to put on RAID and what to put on NVME

[possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip]

Spinning disks can perform well if you do it right

[possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip]

It also can improve performance when done with enough disks

[ch00f@lemmy.world]

My new motherboard actually has a RAID controller for the M.2 slots. I know people frown on hardware raid, but given it's the boot drive, it might just be easiest to count on it for daily operation and backup to the software RAID/something else every night.

[ch00f@lemmy.world]

Lucked out on eBay and got it for $50.

[ch00f@lemmy.world]

So are you thinking like a raspberry pi with an 18TB hard drive accepting nightly backups through restic?

[ch00f@lemmy.world]

Doesn't this just pass the issue to when the snapshot is made? If the snapshot is created mid-database update, won't you have the same problem?

[ch00f@lemmy.world]

Wouldn't this require the service to go down for a few minutes every night?

[schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business]

Make sure, if you use hardware RAID, you know what happens if your controller dies.

Is the data in a format you can access it easily? Do you need a specific raid controller to be able to read it in the future? How are you going to get a new controller if you need it?

That's a big reason why people nudge you to software raid: if you're using md and doing a mirror, then that'll work on any damn drive controller on earth that linux can talk to, and you don't need to worry about how you're getting your data back if a controller dies on you.

[bizdelnick@lemmy.ml]

I meant software RAID of course. Hardware RAIDs just cause headacehes, but fake RAIDs that are built into motherboards are a real nightmare.

[malreynolds@slrpnk.net]

Yup (although minutes seems long and depending on usage weekly might be fine). You can also combine it with updates which require going down anyway.

[ch00f@lemmy.world]

So I’m kind of on the fence about this. I ran a raid boot disk system like 12 years ago, and it was a total pain in the ass. Just getting it to boot after an update was a bit hit or miss.

Right now I’m leaning towards hardware nvme raid for the boot disk just to obfuscate that for Linux, but still treat it delicately and back up anything of importance nightly to a proper software raid and ultimately to another medium as well.