Question about raid1

[ruiz107]

Lets say i have a dedicated server with a raid1(mirror) array, and one of the harddrives fail. How would i know if that happens? My server will still be functional? Thanks!!!

[thisisit3]

it depends,

do you have hardware RAID? if yes then you need some special software which communicates with the RAID controller and reports the status of the array. Usually this software allows you to send commands to the controller (enable/disable drive, enable/disable hot spare, etc).

do you have software RAID? same thing counts but you need the admin tools to "talk" to the software array, for example mdadm.

[Gwaihir]

Yes, your server would continue to function (though disk reads will be a bit slower, because it has just one of the two drives left to read from).

As thisisit3 indicates, you'll want to have proper software in place to be notified of the failure in some way. If this is a JagPC server, then I'd think they put that in place for you as normal part of installing the server.

[ruiz107]

Thanks Gwaihir and thisisit3!!

I ordered this new server at jag and i still don't know if it will be software or hardware raid. Anyway glad to know that raid1 also speedup disk reads i'll ask then later about the software to monitor the raid array. Thanks!

[Gwaihir]

Anyway glad to know that raid1 also speedup disk reads

Hardware RAID1. Software RAID1 will probably have the opposite effect of slowing down disk writes.