This article could be called a continuation of the article I posted yesterday about creating mirrors in SVM, only this time I am talking about replacing failed drives in those mirrors we just created. Take a look and see some options for dealing with failed drives, and how to make Solaris Volume Manager (SVM) happy with it!
Category Archives: How To
New article on disk mirrors and SVM
Ok folks, for any of you out there that manage Solaris machines (or want to), I have written up an article detailing one of the fundamental and basic things you do a lot of. Creating disk mirrors with SVM or Solaris Volume Manager. Now, this article does more than just tell you how to create the mirror, although it does do that. In addition, I tried to explain what was going on so that you could get an understanding of what was happening when you were running the commands. In the near future, we’ll have more articles dealing with SVM on such topics as how to replace a failed drive, and even other RAID options. For now though, we dig in to the area of mirrors. Check it out, I hope you find it useful!
New article on chkconfig!
Ok folks, for anyone that might be interested, I have written an article on the Linux chkconfig command, and how to use it to manager services on your system. There’s even a little background info on System V and how we got here. Check it out, and I hope you like it.
Backup Your Data Now!
Greetings to all you surfers out there. I wanted to visit a topic that I most likely will not only visit often as time marches onward, but write about a bunch too, and that is backing up your data. Most folk don’t like to think about the bad things that might happen to your precious computer(s). This applies to home users and big time data center folk alike. I have found backups and the true art of backing up data to be one of the most mis-understood, under utilized and under appreciated art forms out there.
Lots of people don’t think about backups for one thing. Another is they have that “it won’t happen to me” mentality. Well, I have seen more than my share of drives fail, and brothers and sisters, it dang sure can happen to you. In fact, I have seen two statistical anomalies/impossibilities in the last couple of years alone, and that was two separate servers, made by two separate vendors, that at two separate times, had two drives fail at the same time. This took out a RAID 5 array on one server, and a mirror on the other. Luckily though, my team knows and understands backups so it was really a non-event, we pulled the data off of tape and were back in business. Aaah, but if there wasn’t a good backup!!??
Another thing, I see folk (usually management) that don’t “get” backups. They think it’s some automagic thing that just happens because the backup operator pressed a button marked “Backup Your Stuff Now By Pressing This Button”. Well kids, it ain’t that easy. There are lots of factors and hurdles to think about and overcome when it comes to backing up your data, again that’s true whether it’s your home PC or a whole server floor full of machines. I’ll get into all of this later, but for now I just wanted to get the topic out in the lime light, and try to remind everyone that they need to backup their stuff!
One quick tip that I have for desktop users, like folk at home or in small offices. Go grab you an external hard drive, one that connects to your PC with the USB interface. That way you can turn it on when you need it, and simply copy all of your important stuff onto it. You can get software even, that will do the copy jobs for you. Some have nice features that track changes, compress and sort your files. That’s all well and good, but it’s not required. As long as you have a copy of the stuff that you need somewhere, you will be doing much better, and be much more worry and stress free when (notice I said when, not if) your main hard drive decides to go belly up.
Computer Buying 101
I have posted a new article where I talk about some basics of computers, buying computers, what all the acronyms and abbreviations mean and what they mean to you. Also, I talk about some observations and trends that I see, and in general try to give those not familiar with computers, especially hardware, some ammunition for talking to that sales person somewhere. It’s a long article, so it will take a few minutes to read, but it took several hours to write so maybe it’s a good trade. As I think of more things to add, I’ll update it, just like any other article on this site. Technology keeps changing, and so does information, so I am not afraid to update the information I am collecting here as I see fit. Feel free to check it out, and let me know what you think. It’s in the Library section, along with our other articles.