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I would like to setup a two nodes PROXMOX cluster with DRBD storage. The nodes will be connected by gigabit ethernet. What would be the best storage setup in terms of reliability, performance and costs electiveness?

My favorite would be RAID 10, but my colleague argues that RAID 0 would be sufficient since DRBD works as RAID 1. I also heard RAID 1 is good option.

Lucas Kauffman
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Maciek Sawicki
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1 Answers1

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"What will be the best storage setup in terms of reliability" - "but my colleague argues that RAID 0 would be sufficient". RAID 0 and reliability do not belong together.

Consider reading ServerFault's What are the different widely used RAID levels and when should I consider them? question for more information, but RAID 0 is never a good idea. Ever. Apart from short-term mass-storage RAID 0 should be avoided at all costs - they say it's called RAID 0 because 0 is the % of data that is likely to be recoverable.

While DRBD may provide a mirror in itself and if you want a compromise the hardware RAID 1 should be fine, although it does depends on disk I/O.

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tombull89
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    i agree. consider that while using raid-0 if you schedule maintenance on either node you now have no redundancy at all, and higher than N chance of disk failure. – Sirex Feb 21 '12 at 12:39
  • Thanks for answer. I managed to convince my colleagues/managers to use raid 10 :). Now I'm waiting for 4x1TB hdds :) (I have already identical 4). I'm sure it was best option. – Maciek Sawicki Feb 22 '12 at 09:45
  • Out of interest, what speed/interface/make are they, and how much did they cost you? – tombull89 Feb 22 '12 at 11:07
  • SATA 3Gb/s (4x Barracuda 7200.11 1TB per node). It was about 125 USD per disk. – Maciek Sawicki Feb 22 '12 at 14:08
  • I was just about to ask a similar question - but your answer doesn't really take the DRBD factor into account; Wouldn't you consider DRBD a form of RAID 1? Are your recommending RAID1 on ALL sides of the DRBD cluster? Certainly that's overkill, right? If any, the "default" primary would be RAID1/RAID10, but the rest could be bare or RAID0, right? – Doug Kress Feb 23 '12 at 05:24
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    I'm going to use it in primary/primary mode in high availability cluster for virtualization purposes. And there will be only two nodes, so I believe in my case having similar node setup is essential. – Maciek Sawicki Feb 23 '12 at 09:42