WTF is softraid?
 

OVH.com has "softraid" for all their servers. Does it mean my data is protected if my server fails? :helpme

It's software RAID, so typically RAID either at BIOS or OS level rather then a physical RAID controller card.

It´s a software raid and it´s only protected if 1 hard drive fails.

Not necessarily, depends on the raid level that's set.

Don't onboard controllers usually depend on the cpu some up to a lot? I'm asking because I don't know but why soft raid would be a good idea for servers would be beyond me

RAID is being controlled by software.

Wow, I wouldn't want to be on the same box with some other idiot using software raid if it works the way I think it does. That's for sure

you can select the non software raid.

depends if you are on vps or dedicated.

im on the SP-64 Server line with the hard raid option, but if its vps i dont think you have a choice.

There's a reason why Hardware Raid is more expensive than Software Raid (usually free)... the hardware option is a much better one. It amazes me, however, that so many people I know spend the extra money on a hardware raid but then don't get the BBU option.

I have soft raid with 2 drives, and so far every time when drive failed it was working fine by replacing faulty drive. But not last time, some of data was lost, which indicate how that method is not good enough obviously.

This is exactly where a BBU would have helped as it stores data in a cache that can be written back to the raid when the replacement drive is added. It won't power the RAID, but will provide a pretty decent window to have the drive replaced without the loss of data.

Of course, this necessitates having a hardware raid too.

RAID1 or RAID5/RAID6 will protect you from data loss if a drive fails, but there are still a number of scenarios where data can become (often silently) corrupted.

RAID is a fairly simple, old school technology. These days there are file systems which offer RAID-like redundancy, but provide higher level protection. ZFS checksums the data on every read, and if the checksum fails (data corrupt) it can self heal by (a) reading the same data from elsewhere (eg another drive) and (b) rewriting the corrupt data with the correct data. The best you'll get with RAID is an error when it detects that two versions of the same data are different...but which one (if any) is correct?

Hardware RAID isn't necessarily that much better then software raid especially nowadays. I'm running software raid 10 on my recent servers along with ZFS on root with the FreeBSD ones.

That may be the case. I have no idea to be honest. I'm certainly stuck in my ways though in that I would always take a hardware raid with a BBU on a RAID10, 50 or 60. I'm not really much of a fan of RAID5, but I do like RAID10, in particular, for databases and always prefer a quality hardware raid controller, like an LSI product. As such, I've always balked at even the hint of a software raid when ordering servers, so my experience with software raid is extremely limited.

what server do you have on ovh?

I have 2 , they work fine for my purposes