Re: [BLUG] RAID-like redundancy for a linux?

Linux has had software RAID for years and years. There are some idiosyncrasies, but overall it works real well. (A Google search of "software RAID Linux" should cover all the needed info.)

Due to the nature of the RAID process, the usable space is the lowest common size of the drives. (You don't need to worry about differing disk geometries these days.) If the space difference is large, you can still use the extra space as non-RAID storage.

You don't need weird/custom kernels, and the easiest way to set this up has been as an option in the installation process -- it has been available for the past decade or so. (Ubuntu Server, like Debian before it, has this as an option. I am less confident about some of the GUI install processes.)

In Linux software RAID creates a block device. You can pretty much put any filesystem you want on it.

Cheers,
Steven Black

On Oct 29, 2012 7:46 PM, "Ben Shewmaker" <ben@shewbox.org> wrote:

I have a home server (sporting a dual core AMD E-350 and 4 gigs of
ram) running Ubuntu Server 12.04 and have been really happy with it
for the last 6 months.  The one area where I am not happy is my lack
of data redundancy.  I use this as my NAS as well, using offsite
backup for my personal and irreplaceable files (I use SpiderOak) but
it would still be nice to have some redundancy locally in case of a
single drive failure.  I'm wondering if anyone could recommend any
software solutions to doing some sort of RAID-like redundancy within
Ubuntu server?  I've been reading about ZFS, which seems interesting,
but I also see that it cannot be included in Linux because it is
incompatible with the GPL.  Is ZFS worth considering?  Are there other
solutions like ZFS out there that I can use?  That is, is there some
software solution that allows creating a pool of disks that will take
care of data redundancy and be able to recover from a drive failure?
Also, does using different capacity disks make this a much harder
challenge?

Thanks!

Ben
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