SuSE

Hello Lunix people,

I am looking for Raid software or solution besides Veritas. Veritas has some great software but are way too costly. Does anyone know of good raid software that but NOT Veritas. I need the funcations but not the cost.

[Note: No email permitted in posts- Neo]

I really wouldn't post your e-mail address publically on any forum, it is for one thing against the rules of this forum!

Anyway, I use the builtin software RAID tools under SUSE Linux. I have written a brief (and terse!) article describing some of the configuration

http://www.zazzybob.com/suseraid.html

Best of all, the software RAID tools come bundled with your distribution at no extra cost (and that implies - in most cases - that it costs nothing at all!).

Cheers
ZB

Oops!! sorry about the e-mail.

I know about the raid tools at first install of Redhat AS 2.1 but after that if you want expand, reduce or change a volume how do you do that. I know of Veritas can do that and the install software Raid tool but are there any other tools that allow you to expand or change a software Raid after install?

xtmeisel

Though not available for GNU/Linux, just currently available for Free/Open/NetBSD, you might want to keep an eye on this project. Incase it is ported to GNU/Linux in the future.
Or if you find this project utmost important to you, you can always decide to install FreeBSD. Both these options are free.

Vinum, "The Vinum Volume Manager is a block device driver which implements virtual disk drives. Vinum implements RAID-0 (striping), RAID-1 (mirroring) and RAID-5 (rotated block-interleaved parity). It was inspired by the The VERITAS® volume manager volume manager and maintains many of the concepts of VERITAS®"

more information on Vinum,
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO...rticles/vinum/
http://www.freebsddiary.org/vinum.php

some Vinum benchmarks


Another option which is found under FreeBSD, is 'CCD'
"CCD allows taking several identical disks and concatenate them into one logical filesystem."

I have to agree with Zazzybob, the LVM and RAID software that comes with Linux is just fine.

RHAS 2.1 has RAID but it does not have LVM. In order to expand your filesystem without destroying it you will need LVM. RHAS 3.0 has LVM and it works great.

Thank you for everyone's input. If sounds like I have two options. 1) Use Vinum, which does work, but NOT really supported or 2) move to Redhat AS 3.0, which uses LVM, which IS supported. The problem I am having is I have a Redhat System with a 1.5 terabytes of disks. I am running an Oracle database on this system. As this database grows I need to grow the Volume with it. When I first install Redhat AS 2.1 I can create my volumes anyway I want which is great. Now after install how do I grow a volume? I can install Veritas but they want $$$$$$$$ and have not acted in good faith. So now I on a mission to find a SUPPORTED raid software. On Sun you and Sun software raid and then you Veritas software raid. But on Redhat it looks like my only supported if Veritas. I think but not sure but LVM is a Veritas created product. Kind of like a Veritas light. Something to get you hooked on.

Based on your last reply I would personally try to upgrade to RHAS 3.0. As a side note, LVM (Logical Volume Manager) is a generic term. Most *nixes have some sort of LVM from the vendor and there are also a ton of vendors with LVM products.