Heterogenous, dynamic RAID for a home server

[Shahar Dag]

I would try:
4*2T => (raid 5) net 6T
3*1T => (raid 5) net 2T
Total net disk space is the same 8T but all disks are in raid

Shahar

-----Original Message-----
From: linux-il-bounces at cs.huji.ac.il [mailto:linux-il-bounces at cs.huji.ac.il]
On Behalf Of Ira Abramov
Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2012 3:33 PM
To: IGLU Mailing list
Subject: Heterogenous, dynamic RAID for a home server

Hey people,

A friend of mine want to build a file server machine at home to get the
benefits of a Drobo, but for 1500 NIS rather than $1500.

The idea is to mix in 1T, 2T and 3T disks he already has, and on occasion
grow the ׁ•torage by another disk or replace and rebalance it.
He wants it to be more reliable than RAID0 but more efficient than RAID10,
so RAID 5/6 are more like it.

I looked around at the idea of ZFS or a distributed FS on a single node, but
they are not options. I'm thinking how to do it with a block redundancy
scheme, and so far I came up with this: create a RAID5 from the lower 1TB of
all the disks you have, then a smaller RAID5 array from the second TB, and
finally a RAID1 or RAID5 from whatever you have left.

so if we say I have 2*3T and 2*2T and 1*1T, I have (5-1)*1T+(4-1)*1T+1T (the
last is RAID1). now I have 8TB in three block devices, and I make a single
LV (LVM2) from three extents.

Is there a better solution? do note that it's not optimal for spindle
activity, but this is a home machine serving two other computers and a TV
streamer at the worst case.

Any feedback is welcome...

--
Perishable item
Ira Abramov
http://ira.abramov.org/email/

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