samba - Jun 2003 - samba failover plan on unix OS using hardware RAID

Hi all,

I've been asked to produce a plan for samba failover for an office with
about 30 2000/XP machines and a few unix servers. We currently have a
FreeBSD single-harddrive SCSI box providing samba, dhcp and dns services.
Reliability and cost are the priorities, in that order, over
speed/performance. We just need the reliability - we don't ever ever want to
have to switch to a new pdc. We could afford a few hours downtime in an
emergency, and there would be no data to save, just configs which are easily
backed up on a daily basis - I just need to assure my bosses that the trust
relationship between the pdc and the XP clients won't be broken, even with a
hardware failure.

So, my suggestion is IDE hardware RAID 1, single but very good raid card,
which can be replaced within a few hours by a trusted vendor, and 2 mirrored
harddrives.

What I would appreciate in terms of feedback is first, a basic sanity
check - is this a standard and good plan? If not - what is and why? And
second - I would really like to hear any real-life stories involving samba
with hardware RAID on unix. Did anyone have a RAID, blow a harddrive, and
have to/not have to rebuild the XP - trust relationship?

Thanks much in advance for your time,

Jeanne Schock
Systems Administrator
Regionalhelpwanted.com

> So, my suggestion is IDE hardware RAID 1,
Since you asked, I would go with Raid 5.  Your load
being 20-30 clients is very light.
> is this a standard and good plan?
Depends on many factors as your prereqs are generic
being reliability and cost.  I mean thats just about
every ones prereq.

You need to define;

1) data type
2) amertization period if any and I'm sure you have
some kind of life span for both this need and tech
used.
3) growth over time
> with hardware RAID on unix.
Although my prereq are more intense than most on here,
I would still suggest an external SCSI to IDE Raid box
having SCSI 160/320 to a SCSI card in your PC.

I would also suggest using XFS for Linux as a file
system and testing viablity of RH9 if you plan to use
RH that is.

I've had both the 3ware internal SCSI to IDE and
external RAID box being SCSI to IDE and I vote the
latter Bcuz;

1) Better performance as the i/o is spread amongst the
RAID box and the SCSI card.
2) Better reliability as you can get the external RAID
box with hot swap for on the fly replacement of
drives.
3) More controlled env as a good RAID box will have
proper ventilation, etc while using a 3ware, you have
to make sure your PC case has proper cooling.
4) Ease of install as you don't have to rely on
specialized RAID drivers for your OS, only plain SCSI
drivers being that the nature of this is host
independant.

Plus, don't go to cheap and being penny wise can be
pound foolish.

Bri-  

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