As a storage professional am I working with storage on a daily basis. Therefore was I searching for hot spare funtionality at Unraid and did not find it.
(Feel free to correct me when I am wrong.)
Definitions:
Hot Spare: In case of a disk failure a hot spare disk is automatically added to the array and triggers the normal data/parity rebuild.
Global Hot Spare: Hot spare disk to be used by the complete array.
Local Hot Spare: Hot Spare intended for one single disk pool.
Question is does Unraid require hot spare functionality??
Just remember why we use NAS storage? We like to have some level of hardware redundancy for our data.
Hot spares can be an addition to the overall package of hardware redundancy and when used raise the redundancy level.
There are many different (hardware) redundancy solutions one can add to your Unraid system. It is just a matter of how far you want to take it and how important your data is to you.
Slider always moves between cost on one side and highest possible data redundancy on the other side.
Benefit which hot spare feature would bring is the fact that the feature is fully automatic from the time a hot spare has been made available.
Another benefit is that the time your array runs in degraded mode is reduced.
Some posts expressed worry that in case unraid encounters a bad SATA connection a hot spare will kick in. (when available)
Exactly what I would want! First priority is the health of the array.
Other posts have mentioned the problem of having a hot spare available at disk array's with different disk capacities.
Well that is true. It is a bit more work when you use disks with different capacity to come to the correct disk size you need.
In this case it is more easy to use disks with same capacity for every drive pool.
If hot spare feature is optional one could choose to use this feature or not.
A choice to have a global or local hot spare would complete the whole.
Would it not be a very peaceful thought when I am at work and I do not have to worry about my unraid system at home in case my Unraid system could have a hot spare available....
Proactivity is the definition of being in control.
Because failing slices from RAID 1 or RAID 5 volumes are automatically replaced and resynchronized by hot spares in the event of a failure, hot spares offer protection against the failure of hardware.
Hot Spare functionality?
in Lounge
Posted
Because failing slices from RAID 1 or RAID 5 volumes are automatically replaced and resynchronized by hot spares in the event of a failure, hot spares offer protection against the failure of hardware.