[Info-vax] Eisner? Down? (20 days later)

[Richard B. Gilbert]

JF Mezei wrote:
> VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
> 
>> For Eisner, I'd toss a vote in the ballot box for HBVS.  
> 
> If they used raid-5 to bind multiple small disks into a big one, why not
> just buy 1 modern disk and put it all on one disk and just back it up ?
> It would be a lot simpler and less chance of failure.
> 

The question is never WHETHER a disk drive will fail.  The drive WILL 
fail; the only question is when!

When that one big disk fails, the system is down.  Again!

ISTR that you can have a "hot spare" in a RAID-5 set with a hardware 
RAID controller and that drive will replace the first member of the set 
to fail.  If the SYS$MANGLER is paying attention, he should notice the 
failure no later than the first work day following the failure.

I made it a point both to check my error counters and log files and ALSO 
to visit the computer room at least once a day to look for yellow lights 
on the drives or failed power supplies, listen for "that loud scraping 
sound", look for things turned off that should be on, etc.

I found a few problems that way and was generally able to prevent 
problems from turning into crises!