DiskSuite RAID's across machines

From: Daniel Baldoni (dbaldoni@iinet.net.au)
Date: Thu Sep 18 2003 - 03:00:14 EDT


G'day folks,

Not strictly an urgent matter, but I hope you'll forgive my asking...

We have recently built a machine with 2 internal disks (fully mirrored) and
an external SCSI enclosure (6 disks, 4 in a raid5 - with 1 hot spare and 1
"blank"). At present, there are metadbs on all 8 drives - with the two
internals each having 4 copies (so that the box can boot without the external
enclosure) and the externals 1 each (for a total of 14 replicas).

Now, the client wants a second machine setup to mirror (no pun intended) the
configuration of their production box. But, here's the kicker - we have to
use the same external enclosure. So, is there some way to tell the second
machine about a raid5 without having to reinitialise the disks if/when we
plug them in (losing 50+GB data is not an option <grin>).

Also, I'm interested in people's comments about the setup of the metadbs. Is
there a better way? We can't just put replicas on the external enclosure (as
whichever machine doesn't have it won't boot). We can't just put them on the
internal disks in case of failure.

Thanks in advance for any help. Ciao.

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------+---------------------
Daniel Baldoni BAppSc, PGradDipCompSci                 |  Technical Director
require 'std/disclaimer.pl'                            |  LcdS Pty. Ltd.
-------------------------------------------------------+  856B Canning Hwy
Phone/FAX:  +61-8-9364-8171                            |  Applecross
Mobile:     041-888-9794                               |  WA 6153
URL:        http://www.lcds.com.au/                    |  Australia
-------------------------------------------------------+---------------------
"Any time there's something so ridiculous that no rational systems programmer
 would even consider trying it, they send for me."; paraphrased from "King Of
 The Murgos" by David Eddings.  (I'm not good, just crazy)
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