Want to tweak my system? (paying gig)

[Oren Beck]

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 2:32 PM, Greg Brooks <gregb at west-third.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
>  I posted many weeks back about a server I've got that's incorrectly
>  reporting available space. I'll spare everyone the rehash except to say: I'd
>  like it fixed, and I'd like to pay one of you smart folks to do it.
>
>  Scope:
>
>  . SSH in
>  . Figure out why a drive with 250 gb of space only shows 125gb or so
>  . Figure out if it can be fixed non-destructively (i.e., without removing
>  all the data on there now)
>  . If it can be fixed non-destructively, make the fix
>
>  Happy to pay via PayPal. Interested parties hit me off-list with a rough
>  estimate.
>
>  Thanks,
>  Greg Brooks
>  gregb at west-third.com
>  _______________________________________________
Ok-I need a bit more information to see what we are dealing with . You
use the term "server" which to most of us implies there are remote
users. Is this a situation where  downtime is a major deal killer? As
in "mission critical?"

If those are both "Yes"? Then the size reporting issue is in itself
less of an initial concern. The bigger risk is if you have a multiuser
and/or  or mission critical server with no graceful failure path in
place. Perhaps there is a Linux workalike to the old Novell SFT
systems? We do have s few Novell group folks on the list who could
comment on that.

In a past situation where mundane degrees of reliability would do we
used a hardware mirror device called Duplidisk. It's a "dumb" but hot
swappable in some cases- drive mirror with a fault buzzer and some
remote console in the more $$ versions. The beauty of the Dupli
devices is that a single drive hardware failure becomes a less stress
event. "Press Buzzer silence button"  Use key and swap drive dray-
relock drive tray and mirror rebuild proceeds in background. The
paranoid could retire the former "good" drive to an archive copy
device after the mirror has rebuilt.
Or is that actually NOT paranoia bur damned good sense?

You have to do risk Vs $ evaluations as missing the call gets much
more $$$ very fast these days.


-- 
Oren Beck

816.729.3645