On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 11:42:42AM -0700, James Ward wrote:

> I'm setting up a new BackupPC server as my current one has gotten  
> full.  This system has 2G RAM, quad Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 3.20GHz and  
> a 3ware 6.5T array.  I believe the array is currently RAID5 with no  
> hot spare.  From what I'm reading, RAID5 is a no-no as is ext3?
> 
> What is the best way to set up the RAID array for BackupPC?

The array for BackupPC should be tuned for access time, mostly.
Therfore: As much disk heads as possible, disks as fast as possible.
If you want to use few big disks, go for RAID-10 since it does not
suffer the write-performance-impact of RAID-5. If you aim for more
disks (like 10), you might want to use RAID-5 or -6.

I've got a RAID-5 with only 3 disks and I'm regretting it a lot (just
didn't find the time to buy that 4th disk and migrate to RAID-10 - I'll
report if I did the move and what the results were).

Also, ext3 doesn't seem to be a good choice. XFS and ZFS are
recommended. (But ZFS is Solaris-only and needs lots of memory and CPU
power itself.)

Oh, BTW, consider upgrading RAM. It's very, very cheap these days and
helps a lot for having the OS cache metadata (directories etc.).

HTH,

Tino.

-- 
"What we nourish flourishes." - "Was wir nähren erblüht."

www.lichtkreis-chemnitz.de
www.craniosacralzentrum.de

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