[wplug] Help deciding a RAID+LVM+LUKS setup

Justin Smith justin at js-wordsmith.com
Sun Jul 21 23:30:50 EDT 2013


Anyone who’s met me in person knows that I take great pride in my little 
CentOS server. I built it last fall when I got the itch to start running my own 
services. Before I knew it, I was using the server for a file server as well, 
and the space has really filled up. A single 2 TB drive only gets you so far, 
you know? 

I need to expand the storage, and I’ve heard that LVM pairs well with RAID. 
I also want to redo my disks with dm-crypt+LUKS to keep everything secure. 
So basically, I’m looking at RAID + LUKS + LVM...not necessarily in that 
order. (I’ve got a 64gb SSD as the OS drive, so there’s no need to take 
that into consideration. We’re strictly talking about a storage array here.)

I just can’t make up my mind up on the hard disk configuration. I do know 
that I want redundancy and software RAID. I’d  like to mitigate risk, and 
that means not subjecting myself to vendor lock-in from a hardware 
controller just to get a negligible (for my purposes) performance boost.

But which level of RAID should I use? The horror stories about RAID 5 are 
unnerving; on the other hand, I probably don’t have enough drive slots to 
have a RAID 10 array of any appreciable capacity unless I remove the 2TB 
drive and buy a quartet of 3 or 4 TB drives. How shall I put this.../that’s 
expensive/.

My server’s mini-ITX motherboard has 6 SATA slots. The SSD takes up one, 
which leaves me room for 5 drives. I could probably fit another one in the 
case if I bought a PCI-e SATA controller.

Any ideas, guys?

--
*Justin S. Smith*
Vice chair/secretary, WPLUG Board of Directors
http://www.wplug.org[1] 

/"Isn't it ironic that the proprietary software developers call us 
communists? We are the ones who have provided for a free market, where 
they allow only monopoly."/
-Richard Stallman

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[1] http://www.wplug.org


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