SoftRAID 3 Manual Excerpts:
RAID Scenarios
The following are scenarios for solving data storage challenges using SoftRAID 3’s powerful new features.
Challenge 1: Large Database Manager needs backup and speed.
Joan manages a large FileMaker Pro database server used for online transactions for a mail-order company. She has an Apple X-Serve. She needs to always have a backup available in case of drive failure and she needs to provide quick data access to the Sales Reps on the phones.
Solution: Four Disk Mirror Volume
Joan sets up a three disk mirror with the disks in bays 2, 3 and 4, with the boot disk residing in bay 1. When she is setting it up, she confirms that the “Use all disks for Mirror reads” in the Driver Preferences is turned on. This allows SoftRAID to read data off of the disks as if they were part of a Stripe volume. At the end of each day, she uses the Split Mirror command to split off a secondary disk and make it read-only. She then pulls this disk out of the X-Serve, takes it to another X-Serve and makes a tape backup which is then stored off site. She takes the disk and reconnects it to her server. The disk is added back to the Volume with the Convert Read-only Secondary Volume command. SoftRAID performs an automatic rebuild while the volume is in use.
Challenge 2: Commuter needs to safely take disk from work to office.
Emil works as an art director, three days in the office and two days at home. He has a desktop Mac with 2 internal ATA drives at both locations and takes his FireWire drive with him from home to office. He needs to be able to have ongoing backup at each site and be able to take his projects home to work on them and bring the changes back to the office.
Solution: One Mirror, One traveling disk, two read-only secondary disks
Emil used SoftRAID 3 to make a two disk mirror with his portable FireWire drive as his Primary disk and one of his ATA disks as his secondary disk at his office. At the end of the day, he turned his secondary disk into a read-only drive with the Split Mirror command. This protects him or someone else in his company from mistakenly booting up without the Primary disk. If a SoftRAID mirror volume secondary disk boots up without the Primary, SoftRAID automatically turns it into a Primary disk that won’t recognize the original volume.
At the end of the first day, he takes his Primary disk home and plugs it in with a second FireWire drive which will become his home backup. The SoftRAID application, after launching, will indicate that his mirror volume is missing a Solution 2 secondary i.e., his office disk. Using the Add Secondary disk command he adds his second FireWire disk to the mirror volume. SoftRAID will automatically begin to rebuild that disk into a mirror as he uses the volume. SoftRAID indicates that there is a secondary disk missing but will still create a mirror as Emil works. At the end of his session Emil uses the Split Mirror command again to make his home disk read-only, just in case.
The next day he takes the Primary drive back to the office. He plugs the disk in and boots up the machine. Again, the SoftRAID Application window will indicate that the volume is missing a secondary. Emil will selects the original secondary which was converted into a Read-only secondary and the Convert Read-only Secondary Volume command under the Volume menu. This will rejoin and rebuild the Mirror volume. SoftRAID will rebuild a 10 GB disk in approximately 20 minutes in the background. The missing secondary state will remain in the SoftRAID volume tile, but the Mirror volume will operate correctly, ensuring him a backup at both locations. At the end of his time in the office, he will repeat the Split Mirror procedure and when he returns home he will repeat the Convert Read-only Secondary Volume operation.
He now is able to always have an intact backup from the site that he just left and an archive of his previous work at the site he is going to!
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Challenge 3: Video Producer needs fast digitizing and editing on a PowerBook
Adele is a video producer who uses her G4 PowerBook, Final Cut Pro and two 60 gig FireWire drives. She needs to be able to digitize when she is on the go and have fast access for editing. She also needs backup, but prefers to do that overnight.
Solution: Two FireWire Disks in a Stripe Volume
She sets up a two drive stripe and optimizes it for digital video. She uses this volume whenever she is digitizing and editing. At the end of each day, when she is back at her office, she copies the volume over to her internal ATA disk ensuring that she has a backup on another hard drive
Challenge 4: Disk organization and backup for a large hard drive
Yoshi was given a desktop computer by her children with an internal 38 Gig ATA disk. She was going to use this for storing pictures and iMovies of her grandchildren sent to her on e-mail. She quickly found that her disk was becoming very disorganized and when she wanted to make a backup as her children had told her to do, she didn't know where to start.
Solution: Non-RAID volumes plus a two drive Mirror Volume
First, Yoshi’s daughter bought her two external 60 MB SCSI drives. Yoshi initialized these with the SoftRAID driver and then she was created 7 non-RAID volumes on one of the disks, one for each grandchild. She copied over the pictures of the children from the ATA disk to the non-RAID volumes. As time went on and she found pictures she particularly liked, she put them in a new non-RAID volume called Keepers. She then connected her second disk to her system and used the SoftRAID Convert to Mirror on the Keepers volume to create a mirror with it and her new disk. This second SCSI disk became her ongoing backup disk, as her children had requested.
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