[clug] Ideas for future talks (and who wants to talk at nextm onth's meeting?)

[Paul Wayper]

At 05:57 PM 30/03/2005, you wrote:

>On 2005 Mar 30, , at 12:39 PM, Antti.Roppola at brs.gov.au wrote:
>
>>Andrew Pollock [mailto:andrew-clug at andrew.net.au]
>>
>>>I was thinking, rather than the usual email asking if people want to talk
>>>at next month's meeting, I'd also ask what people would like to hear about.
>>
>>I recently set up a new database server and discovered that once you
>>add filesystem formats, LVM and RAID into the mix, there's a lot of
>>possible combinations to be considered. Currently my new database server
>>has ReiserFS sitting on two LVM pools with the database sitting on
>>the pool of hardware RAID-5.
>>
>>I am also considering mirroring my media server by sticking a 200 Gb
>>disk in a spare Ultra5 and using rsync to replicate any errors that
>>develop in the original data.
>>
>>Those cheap SATA RAID1/0 controllers seem to be a waste of effort.
>
>Actually we have been running a major file system here using LVM and have 
>had a lot of bother with it.  Unfortunately while it might be OK for home 
>use there don't seem to be any warnings about serious LVM use out there in 
>google land but I have talked to other people who have said it's just not 
>ready for critical business applications.  The trouble is it sits 
>underneath your file system so getting rid of it's a bit of a nightmare.

I'm really keen on talking about this idea.  I've been working on ideas for 
a crossover between the staticness and big budget requirements for RAID and 
the unreliability of JBOD (i.e. something that combines the worst features 
of both :-).  Of course, I wouldn't know how to start writing anything, and 
I may be barking up the wrong tree entirely; maybe some clever use of RAID 
and LVM and file systems that I don't know about will provide the 
combination of scalability and reliability I'm looking for.  So it'd be 
great to have a general discussion on this.

One thing that might be an interesting discussion topic is "new stuff in 
computing".  A conversation where people can hear about what other people 
have heard about new technologies.  Sharing good or bad experiences with 
new hardware and software, especially for the many of us who build machines 
on their own (and, for some reason, enjoy it :-) is invaluable.  What do 
you think?

I've got lots of other ideas for topics - a "How To Get MythTV Running" 
session would have been priceless to me two months ago :-) - but maybe 
that's enough from me for now.

Have fun,

Paul

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