[plug] re: RAID5 & Hot Spares

[Craig Ringer]

> Sorry, there is a RAID controller card (ServerRaid-5i (IBM). The reason the question was asked was to find out if there are any issues in using raid5  in an Linux environment as well as if there were going to be any issues in Linux's ability to handle the changes if a hot spare was used. 

The only possible issue with linux + RAID would be the driver for the 
RAID card. RAID volumes appear under linux as if they were just any 
other SCSI disk - that's the RAID hardware's job. The RAID driver for 
hardware RAID devices is little more than SCSI adapter driver with 
extensions for monitoring and admin work on the array.

> Yes, the purpose of the raid is redundancy, also what must be taken into account is the load. This issue is handled by the processor(s) and memory.  Since this server is being used as a corporate database server serving information to 13 sites throughout Australia and Tasmania.  This seemed to be a viable solution.

Decent hardware RAID should impose little or no more CPU load than a 
normal SCSI array - that is to say, stuff all.

Craig