Recommendation for Solaris 10 verses Linux & RAID for Subversion Server?

[Steve Gardell <sg...@iperia.com>]

We have experimented a bit with Subversion and are looking to
move it into production. I have spent a bit of time in the archives,
but apologies if this has already been addressed in some not-
immediately obvious fashion.
 
I am looking at either a Sun T2000 server with built-in RAID (0,1) or
some roughly comparable Dell, also with built-in RAID. We 
anticipate using the FSFS mechanism.
 
Is there any compelling reason to pursue one alternative over
the other? Which Linux?
 
Also, I saw one poster strongly recommend RAID 5.
RAID seems like a no-brainer, but is there really a compelling 
argument for RAID5 this verses RAID 1 or RAID 0,1?
 
Thanks in advance.
 
Steven Gardell
Vice President of Engineering, Iperia
978-437-3544
 

Re: Recommendation for Solaris 10 verses Linux & RAID for Subversion Server?

[Nico Kadel-Garcia <nk...@comcast.net>]

Michael Goettsche wrote:

> Unless your Subversion server will be *extremely* busy or the data
> safey is extremely critical you shouldn't need anything other than
> RAID 1. The probability of two disks crashing at the same time is
> very low and in that case you would still have your nightly backups.
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> Best Regards,
> Michael Goettsche
> svn-hosting.com - Professional Subversion and Trac Hosting

I tend to throw out the RAID, and use a nightly disk mirror on the second 
disk. The far likelier cause of file loss is operator error, not disk 
failure in my experience, and it's a lot easier to recover the files from a 
read-only repository. 


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Re: Recommendation for Solaris 10 verses Linux & RAID for Subversion Server?

["Richard P. Welty" <rw...@suespammers.org>]

On Mar 18, 2006, at 1:36 PM, Michael Goettsche wrote:
> The choice of the RAID level depends on your demands. Do you need RAID
> primarily to ensure data safety, do you need it to speed up IO  
> access or do
> you need it for both?
> If the major reason is data safety you should be fine with a RAID 1  
> system.
> If you need data safety and faster operations, RAID 0+1 is a good  
> choice.
> RAID 5 is slower at write operations than the two previous  
> configurations. The
> advantage of RAID 5 is that the data is stored redudantly on three  
> disks. The
> rebuild process is slower than with RAID 1, though.

one more RAID 5 caution: RAID 5 does not tolerate multiple disk failures
at all. a well configured RAID 10 setup has a fair chance of surviving
multiple disk failures; with RAID 5, if you lose a second disk before  
the
rebuild finishes, you're toast.

RAID can be a good high availability solution; it's no substitute for
proper "traditional" backups, though, so don't install a RAID system
because you don't want to handle tapes or burn CD-R copies.

richard
-- 
Richard P. Welty
rwelty@suespammers.org           518-269-8232


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Re: Recommendation for Solaris 10 verses Linux & RAID for Subversion Server?

[Michael Goettsche <mg...@svn-hosting.com>]

On Friday 17 March 2006 16:41, Steve Gardell wrote:
> We have experimented a bit with Subversion and are looking to
> move it into production. I have spent a bit of time in the archives,
> but apologies if this has already been addressed in some not-
> immediately obvious fashion.
>
> I am looking at either a Sun T2000 server with built-in RAID (0,1) or
> some roughly comparable Dell, also with built-in RAID. We
> anticipate using the FSFS mechanism.
>
> Is there any compelling reason to pursue one alternative over
> the other? Which Linux?
>
> Also, I saw one poster strongly recommend RAID 5.
> RAID seems like a no-brainer, but is there really a compelling
> argument for RAID5 this verses RAID 1 or RAID 0,1?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Steven Gardell
> Vice President of Engineering, Iperia
> 978-437-3544

Both systems are fine.
An advantage of using Linux - when using a popular Linux distribution - is 
that the chance of finding binary builds in the future may be higher than 
with Solaris. Additionally, you will find more people being able to assist 
you with Linux+Subversion than with Solaris+Subversion. 
If you have other reasons to prefer one over the other they can outweigh the 
reasons I mentioned, though. 

The choice of the RAID level depends on your demands. Do you need RAID 
primarily to ensure data safety, do you need it to speed up IO access or do 
you need it for both? 
If the major reason is data safety you should be fine with a RAID 1 system. 
If you need data safety and faster operations, RAID 0+1 is a good choice. 
RAID 5 is slower at write operations than the two previous configurations. The 
advantage of RAID 5 is that the data is stored redudantly on three disks. The 
rebuild process is slower than with RAID 1, though.

Unless your Subversion server will be *extremely* busy or the data safey is 
extremely critical you shouldn't need anything other than RAID 1. The 
probability of two disks crashing at the same time is very low and in that 
case you would still have your nightly backups. 

Hope this helps.

Best Regards,
Michael Goettsche
svn-hosting.com - Professional Subversion and Trac Hosting 


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