Re: Non-hard drive partitions on locked down server?
From: Jem Berkes (jb_at_users.pc9.org)
Date: 03/08/05
- Next message: John Reese: "Moving private SSH keys to new machine?"
- Previous message: Jem Berkes: "Re: Non-hard drive partitions on locked down server?"
- In reply to: Walter Mautner: "Re: Non-hard drive partitions on locked down server?"
- Next in thread: Joachim Schipper: "Re: Non-hard drive partitions on locked down server?"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] [ attachment ]
Date: 8 Mar 2005 15:01:26 GMT
> Hmm. Hard drives are still the most durable and reliable option from
> the ones you describe.
Historically, yes but I'm just not confident about modern IDE hard
drives. They have failed on me too often or start making sounds that I'm
not happy about. And if the hardware has a glitch then this stalls the
system during boot -- compare to say a flash drive that can be soft
mounted. Even if it's corrupt, it's not a critical failure and the system
has still booted.
> Depending upon the amount of reads/laser head repositionings and spin
> up/downs, your cd drives might wear out rather quick. Combined with a
> possible problem with dust in that location, I would not give your
> cdrom drive(s) much more then a few months of lifetime.
You might be right about this, dust would be a problem and drive
mechanisms might wear out. Still, from my personal inventory collected
over the years I have far more usable old CD-ROM drives than usable old
hard drives.
> Even flash drives have limitations in rewriteability. Most are
> specified for 100000 rewrites, which may be soon exhausted for
> constantly changing directory entries or atimes. Unlike packet writing
> there is no scheme to shift physical areas for such entries on the
> flashdisk. At least you will have to make heavy use of ram cache and
> the "noatime" option. Having said that, there are a lot of embedded
> linux devices (routers and such) working from flash memory.
Yes, the write cycles are currently a problem. Next generation flash
memories will dramatically improve upon this by the way but that's still
in the labs :) I think it will be exciting though, maybe 5 years away.
> You can put it all on one or two usb sticks (might need a 1GB version
> to store logfiles, but I would at least use a remote syslog server)
> and get one of these low-power boards but make sure they boot from
> usb, and use the noatime and plenty of ram, with write cache to
> minimize actual write-to-flash cycles. Low-power boards may even be
> powered by DC from a buffer accumulator-electronic transformer
> combination.
Sure, multiple sticks seems a nicer way to go. Plenty of RAM will be the
ticket anyway.
-- Jem Berkes Software design for Windows and Linux/Unix-like systems http://www.sysdesign.ca/
- Next message: John Reese: "Moving private SSH keys to new machine?"
- Previous message: Jem Berkes: "Re: Non-hard drive partitions on locked down server?"
- In reply to: Walter Mautner: "Re: Non-hard drive partitions on locked down server?"
- Next in thread: Joachim Schipper: "Re: Non-hard drive partitions on locked down server?"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] [ attachment ]
Relevant Pages
|
