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Announcements Operating Systems Security The Almighty Buck Hardware BSD

OpenBSD CVS RAID Array Failing, Needs Replacement 164

Posted by timothy from the three-small-letters dept.
Sam writes "The OpenBSD cvs server has a failing RAID array. Users of the projects on that array: OpenBSD, OpenSSH, OpenBGPD, OpenNTPD, and the upcoming OpenCVS are all invited to contribute towards the $12,500 cost of a suitably high-spec replacement. OpenBSD Journal article, and original request (thread)."
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OpenBSD CVS RAID Array Failing, Needs Replacement More

OpenBSD CVS RAID Array Failing, Needs Replacement

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  • Gee.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by brilinux ( 255400 ) on Sunday March 13, 2005 @02:26PM (#11927227) Journal
    I guess that it is a good thing that I decided to spend all day today compiling NetBSD instead of OpenBSD ... but, those projects are somewhat important, especially OpenSSH; if I were not a poor college student, I would contribute. Good luck.

  • OpenBSD's RAID is Dying (Score:5, Funny)

    by NitsujTPU ( 19263 ) on Sunday March 13, 2005 @02:37PM (#11927288)
    It is official; Netcraft confirms: OpenBSD's RAID is dying

    One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered OpenBSD community when IDC confirmed that the OpenBSD RAID has failed again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent properly operating. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that OpenBSD's raid has lost more sectors, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. OpenBSD's RAID is collapsing into complete Redundant Disarray of Inexpensive Disks, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

    You don't need to be a Kreskin [amdest.com] to predict OpenBSD's RAID's future. The hand writing is on the wall: OpenBSD's RAID faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for OpenBSD's RAID because OpenBSD's RAID is dying. Things are looking very bad for OpenBSD's RAID. As many of us are already aware, OpenBSD's RAID continues to data. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

    Fact: OpenBSD's RAID is dying
  • How do we actually make a donation?

  • Expensive (Score:4, Interesting)

    by BoomerSooner ( 308737 ) on Sunday March 13, 2005 @02:51PM (#11927363) Homepage Journal
    It would seem to me they could build one for significantly less. Dell's 4 hour service isn't as fast as having spare parts on-hand and swapping them yourself (someone has to be there to let Dell in so why can't they pull a harddrive sled and slide in a new one?). Plus the savings by building it themselves would more than cover the price of spare harddrives/controllers, etc...

    That is just my experience. Dell's service/support is pretty good but I've had a significantly higher rate of failure on their hardware compared to purchasing components individually.
    • Yes, but would you want something as important as these projects running on a home-built unit? They need something that's actually known to work beforehand.

    • Re:Expensive (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Kalak ( 260968 ) on Sunday March 13, 2005 @03:15PM (#11927520) Homepage Journal
      The cost of a spare backplane for the enclosure on this level of equipment is more than a few dollars. We're not just talking having a spare power supply and drives here. 4 hour service is a deal breaker when dealing with highly critical equipment of this level. No amount of spare parts, short of complete redundancy in equipment (another $12k) would be enough to cover every contingency. It's one reason our shop is not going to get an XRAID form Apple - good price point, but our critical infrastructure needs more than next business day response and some "common" spare parts. We're planning on even buying the redundant RAID array as well. Good Sysadmins are supposed to be paranoid and ready to face major disaster with excitement, and to plan for that disaster that should never occurr.
      • We're planning on even buying the redundant RAID array as well.

        Acronym expansion fun!

        "We're planning on even buying the redundant redundant array of [inexpensive/independent] disks array as well."

        To be fair, you did say that it was redundant...
        • There are 2 RAID arrays, so it is a doubly redundant array of [in]expensive disks.

          This message brought to you by the -1 Redundant mod. ;)
      • The truth is, there is not enough information to answer the question. How much data? Acceptable down time? etc. How many suckers will donate?

        Based on what they have now, which is under 350GB, they could just buy a bunch of single disks (300GB for under $250) and mirror/rsync/whatever them. Say they want more space. They can buy 2TB in RAID5 for ~$4400, so getting complete redundancy in equipment is only another ~$4400, not $12k. Not only that, it's 75% of the cost with 6x the original capacity.

        I n

    • Re:Expensive (Score:2, Informative)

      by 0xdeaddead ( 797696 )
      Wow I need to frame that quote some where Dell's support is TERRIBLE. Bottom line here is the scoop. If you want to buy servers on the cheap buy EXTRA ones. the 4 hour support thing is a sham. Every time Ive had to call them on it, they have had to fly people & equipment, or just make up the damedest lies on why they cannot deliver equipment in 48 hours (on the 4 hour support contract none the less).

      The last time they got me (6 days ago) we lost 1 terrabyte of their 'nas' storage... The joke was the

      • Re:Expensive (Score:5, Informative)

        by OrangeSpyderMan ( 589635 ) on Sunday March 13, 2005 @06:27PM (#11928665)
        I agree. At one point Dell sold the company I work for some servers that would be clustered and hooked up to SAN's the world over. They sold us "gold" maintenance, knowing fine well where each and every cluster would be located, because we told them, and they even factored that in to the overall quote. This isn't some little deal for a couple of tens of thousands of dollars, this is a 80,000+ users worldwide, who would all be moving from HP desktops and servers to Dell, for the Wintel stuff. Now guess what nearly blew the deal? One of the locations that was destined to receive a Dell cluster was not supported for 2-3 days a week because their support engineer organised deep-dea fishing trips!!! He was the Dell engineer, and they came within a hair's breadth of blowing this as they furiously scrambled for engineer cover in $LOCATION. I wouldn't give Dell ANY money for service over their default baseline, as they may know how to ship boxes, they don't know jack shit about service.
      • And you haven't sued them why?

    • Re:Expensive (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Dell's 4 hour service isn't as fast as having spare parts on-hand

      Oh sure Dell will sell you 4 hour response... they'll just never deliver on it and last time I spoke with Dell they couldn't even understand fucking English and the best I could get was questions like, "Is the power switched ON?", "Do you currently have power in your area?" and other shit like that.

      "Hey fucktard! We're on the 47th floor in a building with a bunch of other Fortune 100's, we have a massive diesel Caterpillar generator with en

  • question for you guys. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 13, 2005 @02:55PM (#11927382)
    What does the 'i' stand for in RAID?

    Thanks.
  • A person that shall not be named donated a PERC4/DC RAID controller.

    Lets go with "an anonymous benefactor" next time this comes up. I know, not anonymous to you.

    It just sounds less like it "feel off a truck," you know?

  • Current Configuration & Need to Upgrade (Score:5, Informative)

    by Noksagt ( 69097 ) on Sunday March 13, 2005 @03:02PM (#11927430) Homepage
    From this post [theaimsgroup.com]:
    The current raid array is using 14 U160 drives in a dual raid5

    configuration with a couple of hot spares. It is time to build up.
    See, the actual cvs machine is just a p3/gig machine. While there are
    lots of much faster build machines on the network, there has been no
    reason to crank the processor on cvs. It is not cpu bound but
    *strictly* IO bound. And the raid configuration has been working very
    well to keep that IO load under control, well it has been kind of
    working.

    We support more architectures, which means more NFS load is being
    generated. There are more developers, and that does affect things
    because developers working fast do checkouts directly off cvs instead
    of via mirrors. As well, the array is full (it is half 18GB drives
    and half 36GB drives now due to failures after replacement). All of
    them are U160 drives.

    Now there appears that the raid backplane is developing some issues,
    and at the same time, it is time for the "every three to four years"
    replace some parts plan. It's what most IT shops do as well. The
    drives are also getting a bit up there in age now. Perhaps that is
    why I am starting to lose them more often.

    But if we want more oomph, then it is time to go to U320. It is also
    time to move towards another raid controller (already have it) which
    we hope will have supported raid management soon.
    • Looking on the Dell site, a PowerVault 220S with 14 146gb 10k U320 scsi hard drives costs about $10k. I'm guessing that's close to what they're getting. That or one with 14 73gb hard drives for about $8k plus enough spares to last until the next big replacement.

  • shut the damned thing down now... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by advocate_one ( 662832 ) on Sunday March 13, 2005 @03:06PM (#11927450)
    while you've still got good data... take a backup first though... but shut it down...

  • Well, okay, then... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jawtheshark ( 198669 ) * <slashdot.jawtheshark@com> on Sunday March 13, 2005 @03:07PM (#11927457) Homepage Journal
    I already donate yearly... Every november I buy the latest CD and substract the price from 100Euro. That part is simply donated. It's not much, I know, but I'm just an individual. Yes, and ever for such small amounts you make it to the donation page. Cool, eh? (This also means your name is printed on the sleeve of the CD)

    I'll make an exceptional donation... I use OpenBSD on so many systems (now even on a SMP systen... yay!) that I owe Theo and Co.

    • I was going to make a comment about 'They charge for the CD, don't they? And they don't allow free distribution of the Official ISO.' and end with something about how they've decided not to be a 'donation cup' operation. But your approach makes sense.

      (I've 'paid' too, in that I bought the Official CD for version 2.5 direct from openbsd.org. Don't use OpenBSD anymore, tho.)
      • You can download some images for bootable media and then do a netinstall, or download the necessary files and make your own bootable install CD. Given that 99.95% of OpenBSD installations are for firewalls, or at least something that involves sitting on a big connection (hence the paranoia that makes OpenBSD necessary), these are popular options.

        Maybe they should charge for netinstalls?
        • Given that 99.95% of OpenBSD installations are for firewalls. . .

          Which points out a fairly serious issue. People should know the platform they are using for a firewall. Not just 'trust' the people who produce it. For that reason, it's safer to know and properly install a BSD that you're using in other ways, i.e. since I use Desktop NetBSD, I would be more secure running a locked down (the default now) NetBSD firewall, rather than something I'm not actively using in any other fashion on my network.

          Usi
          • No more so than with Linux. Windows users have the same feelings of invulnerability experimenting with Linux.

            Also, while I use Linux and MacOS X, anything of importance lives on my OpenBSD machine and I SSH there for anything important that I need to do. I know it inside out while my other machines are basically just desktop/client machines. I don't know them very well, and I'd be in trouble if I had to lock down my Linux box.
            • But if your other machines get owned then the attacker can capture your login session to the openbsd box and therefore compromise that machine too, you gain no security from using a secure server and an insecure client.
              • "that machine too, you gain no security from using a secure server and an insecure client."

                That's not true. It's good protection against anyone attempting to break in from the outside without a connection initiated by me. By taking reasonable steps (such as keeping client software patched), the risk to my other machines is greatly reduced without me having to learn a whole new firewall etc.

                It's not about being invulnerable, it's about having reasonable security without having to spend unreasonable amounts

  • Not just users of those projects (Score:5, Informative)

    by Bastian ( 66383 ) on Sunday March 13, 2005 @04:55PM (#11928146)
    If you use any OSS unix-like, or many OSS tools other than something with an Open* name, you are likely using at least a few things that have benefitted directly from the OpenBSD project. In an effort to keep OpenBSD secure, they contribute security patches to all sorts of software that runs on OpenBSD.

    In particular, I'd encourage everyone who uses Linux to contribute.

    • Re:Not just users of those projects (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Well, OpenSSL, OpenGPS, OpenGFS, OpenOffice, OpenVB, OpenTTD, OpenVPN and OpenWFE just to name a few aren't actually associated with OpenBSD or even BSD licensed. In truth, most Open* things are under the GPL and done by other people. The good OpenBSD stuff is pf, OpenSSH, OpenBGP, OpenNTP, OpenCVS and OpenBSD itself.
  • After the $20k donation request for the Hackathon 2005, I think this one is a little bit more important ;)
  • If you really believe in open source, this is a fine opportunity to show it.

  • Apple??? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by fdawg ( 22521 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @12:38AM (#11930286)
    I thought Apple based OSX on BSD. Why aren't they flying to BSD's aid? Im actually quite surprised more big businesses aren't riddling the BSD community with money. I realize the whole OSS movement is built on the philosophy of "share and share alike", but blindly ripping the work of others without giving back is gross.
    • http://www.openbsd.org/images/newrack.gif/ [openbsd.org] Gee, it appears that Apple HAS been contributing. Or someone else contributed Apple hardware at least, I don't honestly know for sure.
      • that Apple equipment was bought by Theo using OpenBSD funds. Apple didn't donate anything, nor have they ever

        here's [theaimsgroup.com] what theo has to say about that exact Apple equipment
        • Thanks for that link. I've been considering getting an Apple for desktop work, but it's good to know who's giving back to the various [BSD] communities.

          As was stated earlier, almost anyone using a FOSS OS should send a donation, no matter how small, to OpenBSD. OpenSSH has been widely adopted to benefit us all.

          And YES, this means you too Apple!
    • The original environment was built from NetBSD/ppc, and currently builds off of FreeBSD (apparently they're helping out with the FreeBSD/ppc port too, but that's just hearsay). Anyway, Apple doesn't really derive any code beyond OpenSSH from OpenBSD. The "BSD Community" is not nearly as tightly knit as you seem to think, despite sharing code.

      That said, Apple ought to at least offer a heavily discounted XServe RAID to them. It might foster a stronger relationship between Apple and OpenBSD, and who knows--

    • FTP.exe from Windows 2000 image# strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright @(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California. hmmm....

      • UH OH!

        (on my Slackware Linux system)

        $ strings `which ftp` | grep Copyright
        @(#) Copyright (c) 1985, 1989 Regents of the University of California.
  • There have been no OpenBSD vs posts yet.
    • As in... Software? You make me sad dear boy.

      They are currently running a 14 disk u160 RAID array, and want to go up to u320, (Can't remember how many disks), I've run a soft raid with 3 UWSCSI-2 drives, and my processor choked everytime disk load went up, They are already under fairly heavy load right now, soft raid would just reduce the performance to nothing.
  • Network Appliance a.k.a NetApp is noticeably absent from the OpenBSD donations page (www.openbsd.org/donations.html). Anyone who uses a NetApp knows immediately that the OnTap OS is BSD, always has been BSD.

    Considering the Billions (yes, Billions) of dollars in revenue NetApp has derived from the BSDs, I am appalled at the company's lack of contribution back to the BSD community!

    Considering that a good number of their founders, engineers, and developers were educated at Berkeley (yes the B in BSD), I am

  • It is done. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Nimrangul ( 599578 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @09:33PM (#11949828) Journal
    The money has been raised, the purchase shall soon be made. The link is here [theaimsgroup.com] and you will note that the only companies that put in any money are smaller ones and the rest of the money has come from individuals.

  • Money's in (Score:2, Informative)

    by andkaha ( 79865 )
    Aparantly, the money has now been collected: message here [theaimsgroup.com]

    Also, it was hard to get money from companies, and almost everything seems to have come from caring individuals: message here [theaimsgroup.com]

  • dell hardware is incredibly poor quality compared to other vendors, their support is also very poor.
    In terms of quality dell is comparable to the cheapest of asian vendors, but somehow people believe them to be superior just because they're american. This is just not the case, i have had no end of trouble from dell machines. I also don't like dell's closeness to microsoft and their willingness to drop linux so quickly, also the fact they take steps to render some of their systems incompatible with non windo

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