The Software RAID Inflection Point
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@Dashrender said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
What does @scale use? RAIN?
Yes. Must like I describe with an additional layer that understands the drive speeds (like SSD, 10K and 7.2K.) So it does the things I mention plus it knows which bits go onto which type of storage.
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You can't have any kind of effective hyperconvergence without RAIN. RAID doesn't scale out well at all. You can use RAID under RAIN, but that is pretty limiting.
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@scottalanmiller said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
Here is the thing, I think you are scratching an itch that just isn't there. Who actually needs this functionality? Who is the real world use case where this script would change buying decisions? And how do those changed buying decisions turn into direct financial benefit for the company that makes and supports the new software?
I'll just throw a quick thank you to @Dashrender, as almost everyone in IT seems to go through this same thought process at some point. Now we have a reference page
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@Dashrender said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@scottalanmiller said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@Dashrender said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@scottalanmiller said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@Dashrender said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
The hardware RAID is already taking away the work from MSPs / ITSPs, so what's the difference there?
It doesn't work that way. It takes no time to set up either. MD RAID is already a "zero effort" set up process. But there is pay for supporting it. It's not that this would really hurt an MSP, but it would cost a fortune to make it and support the code, money that could never be recouped, not even with tens of thousands of customers all using it.
So each Linux distro has it's own version of MD? it's not universal like so many other components?
How did you get from somewhere to this?
From here.
@scottalanmiller said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@Dashrender said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
Who pays for MD development now?
The OS vendors, of course. It's part of the OS.
It's actually part of the Linux Kernel now. So maintained under that for all Linux distributions.
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@travisdh1 said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
It's actually part of the Linux Kernel now. So maintained under that for all Linux distributions.
Has been for a long time. But the majority of the Linux kernel is maintained by Red Hat, IBM, Suse and Canonical.
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So it's not maintained by the OS vendors - it's maintained by the kernel support team?
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@Dashrender said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
So it's not maintained by the OS vendors - it's maintained by the kernel support team?
Which is mostly from the OS vendors. Who do you think makes the kernel?
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@scottalanmiller said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@Dashrender said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
So it's not maintained by the OS vendors - it's maintained by the kernel support team?
Which is mostly from the OS vendors. Who do you think makes the kernel?
Whoever Linus Torvalds thinks submits a good kernel patch. Which today is mostly the OS vendors.
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@travisdh1 said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@scottalanmiller said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@Dashrender said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
So it's not maintained by the OS vendors - it's maintained by the kernel support team?
Which is mostly from the OS vendors. Who do you think makes the kernel?
Whoever Linus Torvalds thinks submits a good kernel patch. Which today is mostly the OS vendors.
https://www.redhat.com/en/about/blog/red-hat-leads-open-source-contributions-to-kernel
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Red Hat, Suse and IBM do the majority of the work with Intel as an "also mentioned."
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By 2011 this had changed some, Novell/Suse had fallen to fourth and Intel picked up the pace. Microsoft was at 17th at that point.
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Canonical is probably somewhere up there in the top ten. But over time it remains that Red Hat, Suse, IBM and Intel are the big four that make Linux happen. And overall corporate is 75% of the kernel while volunteer is 25%.
Big banks, governments and military are all big contributors as well.
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While your statement doesn't imply that the MD versions are different, it does lead one who's not knowledgeable to a false conclusion that each Linux distro (at least the base distros) are maintaining their own version of MD. According to Travis, since it's backed into the kernel, that's hopefully not the case.
Basically what I was trying to determine, is MD pretty much the same across all distros of Linux?
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@Dashrender said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
While your statement doesn't imply that the MD versions are different, it does lead one who's not knowledgeable to a false conclusion that each Linux distro (at least the base distros) are maintaining their own version of MD.
Why would it lead someone to that? There is only one Linux kernel, where would different versions come from and where was that implied?
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@Dashrender said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
Basically what I was trying to determine, is MD pretty much the same across all distros of Linux?
Linux is Linux, MD is just part of it. There is one Linux kernel, one MD. Where is the idea that there are different Linux or MD or other components coming from? Honest question, what makes the assumption that a singular thing would naturally vary, happen? I saw nothing that would have led someone to think that, so I'm lost.
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By 2015, corporate is now 80% of the Linux kernel development. Here is the latest contributions list: The Top 10 organizations sponsoring Linux kernel development since the last report include Intel, Red Hat, Linaro, Samsung, IBM, SUSE, Texas Instruments, Vision Engraving Systems, Google and Renesas.
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@scottalanmiller said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@Dashrender said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
While your statement doesn't imply that the MD versions are different, it does lead one who's not knowledgeable to a false conclusion that each Linux distro (at least the base distros) are maintaining their own version of MD.
Why would it lead someone to that? There is only one Linux kernel, where would different versions come from and where was that implied?
You said it's supported by the OS vendors - since so many other OS vendors don't work together, why would I assume they would be working together.
A better response originally from you which would have stopped this whole thread of conversation would have been to say - it's supported by many OS vendors through their cooperative work on the kernel, where MD is supported natively now. or some such statement. Instead we're 30 posts later and only now getting that specific knowledge from probing questions, where the probes are made out to appear like ludicrous considerations.
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@Dashrender said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
You said it's supported by the OS vendors - since so many other OS vendors don't work together, why would I assume they would be working together.
Because we are talking about a single thing that they work together on. Shared projects exist everywhere from childhood through university to the professional world. We are talking about the MD product, no matter how many people work on it or where they come from, that doesn't imply and should not lead someone to think that each person helping is then making their own product. We have a thousand contributors to MangoLassi, but no one assumes that there are one thousand different communities. What makes MD a special case?
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@Dashrender said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
A better response originally from you which would have stopped this whole thread of conversation would have been to say - it's supported by many OS vendors through their cooperative work on the kernel, where MD is supported natively now. or some such statement. Instead we're 30 posts later and only now getting that specific knowledge from probing questions, where the probes are made out to appear like ludicrous considerations.
Or just accept simple answers and not inject unimplied assumptions. Since I had no idea that such an assumption would be brought to the table, it is very difficult to head it off at the pass. Of course if I could guess what people will randomly assume and correct it before it is assumed, I could make things simple. But there was nothing implying that assumption, so I had no reason to think that I needed to explain it.
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@scottalanmiller said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@Dashrender said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
You said it's supported by the OS vendors - since so many other OS vendors don't work together, why would I assume they would be working together.
Because we are talking about a single thing that they work together on. Shared projects exist everywhere from childhood through university to the professional world. We are talking about the MD product, no matter how many people work on it or where they come from, that doesn't imply and should not lead someone to think that each person helping is then making their own product. We have a thousand contributors to MangoLassi, but no one assumes that there are one thousand different communities. What makes MD a special case?
Because @Dashrender wasn't aware of how it worked. I can totally see how someone could be very confused if they are not familiar with the Linux ecosystem.
