This is a false statement. The RAID subsystems used in linux (both of them) are not proprietary and you can move the drives from one vendor’s hardware and software to another. I have moved a RAID 1+0 array from an intel-mobo Centos server to a Tyan-mobo Mediabuntu server without difficulty.
There are other open-source RAID implementations, I am sure. I think what you meant to say was that none of the proprietary implementations are standardized or interoperable.
Good discussion here folks. I want to respond to a few of you individually, but I think it is important to highlight what @feevrt and a few others have mentioned: RAID does not equal backup. Always make sure you have a minimum of two copies of everything that is important to you. I also apologize for not calling out everyone by @ user name as I am limited to 2 mentions per post.
Progrocktv - Sorry to hear about your issues. It sounds like you had a solid red light which means the yellow “low capacity” light was ignored and you became critically low on capacity. A failed drive would be a flashing red light vs. solid. Swapping in a new drive but not increasing the capacity simply caused an unnecessary rebuild and additional stress on the healthy drives.
KevinJones - The vast majority of people who complain about performance on Drobo are using units that likely have been discontinued for years. It’s great to see they are still getting value out of their trusty old Drobo, but our new products are much, much faster as evidenced by the OP and some of the comments here.
ldillon - I am confused by your comment of Drobo arrays being slow with more than 1 concurrent user. Most Drobo arrays are DAS, so they are limited to a single computer by design and the new networked 5N is plenty fast enough for both home and business. Maybe you are referring to a legacy product like the Drobo FS (has been EOL for almost 2 years now). As you mention, FreeNAS is an excellent product, but the reality is most people don’t have the time or desire to build, maintain, and support their own storage array. Kudos to you for finding something that works for you.
@Medievalist - I stand by my statement as any RAID drive migration requires specific software, software versions, and hardware (i.e. RAID controller, firmware on said RAID controller) to work, but I agree that there are varying degrees of difficulty in making this happen. You are obviously very technical having done a RAID migration using open-source tools, but the reality is the average user is not going to know how to do this. It’s the exact reason we make our disk packs compatible in current and next-gen Drobo arrays.
Jim @ Drobo
Jim, thank you for replying to each poster’s specific points.
I think the whole “proprietary” epithet could be skirted if Drobo provided a free software recovery tool for disks rescued from busted Drobos. For all I know Drobo actually does this.
I’m thinking something that could be booted from USB stick on commodity PC hardware, that rescues a drive connected via eSATA dock or USB case. I realize that one drive alone does not a RAID make. But USB cases–even 5 of them–are cheaper than a brand new Drobo.
Your argument that an average user isn’t going to bother with that is valid. But are people who pay $500 for an external drive array really “average” users?
As a technical user, I avoid RAID solutions that I cannot independently recover, unless I have enough cash to buy more than one unit, or unless I have automated backups at scale.
Drobo-sanctioned recovery tools would go a long way to calming my nerves about putting all my data on a Drobo.
No, you’re mistaken. I know nothing of Drobo but I do know RAID, and you are significantly misrepresenting the state of the art. Neil Brown’s mdadm is backwards compatible to previous Open Source RAID mdtools implementations (including previous versions of on-disk structures) and does not require any specific hardware or firmware. I can RAID any group of block devices together, no matter how heterogenous (ATAPI devices, USB devices, ISCI targets, DRDB volumes, AoE etherdrives, whatever as long as it’s block storage). I can do this using one version of OS, firmware and controllers and move the storage media to completely differing versions of OS, firmware, hardware, drivers, etc. trivially.
Also, both dmraid and mdadm support SNIA DDF metadata and on-disk structures. dmraid also supports Highpoint, LSI, Promise, and SI Medley hardware and formats, and mdadm can support the volume metadata format used by Intel Matrix RAID chips. There’s significant cross-compatibility in the FOSS world with non-free RAID implementations, although that’s a recent phenomena.
I’ll accept that most people haven’t the specialized knowledge I have and that’s a perfectly valid point for you to make if you are shipping product for a larger audience than professional computer scientists. And it’s also true that there are huge incompatibilities between vendors of so-called “hardware” RAID controllers. But please do not claim “every RAID is proprietary. You can’t just take a drive out of a RAID, pop it in a PC and read the data” because there are cross-compatible RAID implementations, where you absolutely can do that.
@Isomorphic - Great suggestion that I will socialize with some engineering and PM folks. We do share said tools with Drive Savers and a few others, but seems like something that could be expanded upon.
@Medievalist - I see your point. I was speaking specifically to vendor implementations, many of which use modified versions of open source RAID which require a specific combination of software and hardware to work properly. I could be mistaken, but don’t think many vendors use the open source stuff unmodified. Either way, RAID recovery is not for the faint of heart.
Cheers,
Jim @ Drobo
I believe you are right about the mainstream commercial implementations, and you’re definitely right about the difficulty of RAID recovery today.
I just love it when people say stuff like, “You’ll never use X to do this because Y is enough.” They said the same thing about RAM memory over 640K. They said the same about 1GB HDDs, They said the same thing about 2/4/8/16/32/64/128GB flash drives. The lesson? If you build it, someone will find a use for it. For the last 3 years I’ve personally used an 8TB NAS that uses 8 - 1TB 2.5" laptop hdds. I’ve only used about 3TB of it. But I didn’t bat an eye when someone else mentioned they are using 50TB for a NAS. Half of my video collection is standard definition, the other half is HD. I imagine that number will increase as I archive and stream more HD and UltraHD. When the time comes I’ll probably upgrade to something in the Petabyte range.
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