[Beowulf] RE: Storage - the end of RAID?

[Andrew Piskorski]

On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 02:46:35PM -0400, Ellis H. Wilson III wrote:
>>> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/storage/the-end-of-raid/1154?tag=nl.e539

> The major issue I see with the article is that the author refers to RAID 
> being "dead" when really he should be saying RAID 2-6 is less preferable 
> to RAID 1 (but it does make for a "catchier" article title).

What I think original article author, Robin Harris, probably knew, but
didn't point out explicitly, is that all the official "RAID"
algorithms are ** block oriented **, RAID-1 just as much as RAID-5,
and *that's* why they're "dead".  The only question how long it'll
take for better solutions to become widespread enough for us to ditch
block-oriented RAID entirely.  Everything else Harris mentions is just
supporting detail.

ZFS and Btrfs seem to have the right approach; end-to-end data
assurance provided by the file system.  I look forward to the time
when I can easily use it for real on all my computers.

-- 
Andrew Piskorski <atp at piskorski.com>
http://www.piskorski.com/