Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2000 00:31:51 -0700 (PDT)
From: Andre Hedrick <andre@linux-ide.org>
> And it still doesn't change my contention that somoene who wants
> ultrareliability, and what you call "Enterprise class" computing,
> without doing RAID, is fundamentally insane. There are things we can do
> to try to recover in the face of broken hardware --- but fundamentally,
> cheap sh*t hardware is still cheap sh*t hardware. You don't make
> Enterprise class computers out of cheap sh*t. It just doesn't happen.
Ted, I need to drag you to some of the cool labs that are in the ATA
industry. 7200 RPM ATA drives are 7200 RPM SCSI drives! Only the
electronic interface on the bottom is the difference.
Oh, sure, I'm very well aware of this. (At the same time, I still think
UltraDMA66 is a kludge, and I'm wondering how the ATA is going to
compete with Ultra-160 LVD SCSI --- come up with a UltraDMA132 that only
allows a 9-inch-long cable? :-)
What I was referring to was folks who think they're going to run an
"Enterprise class", absolutely-can-not-fail, mission critical
application using a bare disk (SCSI *or* IDE) without RAID.
We can put in all the clever callbacks from the disk driver to notify
the filesystem that there's a problem, but if the disk has a
catastrophic head crash (iron oxide flying everywhere, preciptating even
more head crashes), there's simply nothing the filesystem can do when it
gets the formal engraved invitation to the funeral. With RAID, at least
you don't lose your data, and your server doesn't go down. That's
generally considered desireable by those silly folks who want enterprise
computing. :-)
- Ted
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Apr 15 2000 - 21:00:18 EST