purplemonkeydishwasher's questions

I would like to make sure at-rest encryption is done in one place and correctly. If there's shared storage, that seems like the right place rather than DAS.

Mainly I'd like to cover the case of drives being recovered without keys and the keys be required when the SAN boots (should be a rare event to not be a pain but also cover the case of someone stealing the whole kit and caboodle).

To attach to the SAN you need iSCSI (with credentials) or be on the FC switch.

This seems like it would cover database and NAS cases.

What's right or wrong with this?

As a reference:

• Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB drives.
• MySQL 5.1.5x running InnoDB tables.
• Linux (CentOS 5.5 etx3 journaled).

Questions:

1. Is it better to use a RAID of these so that drives can be swapped in and out or get a FusionIO or RevoDrive card?

2. If RAID, what controller? LSI? 3Ware?

3. What layout? I would presume the RAID 5 hole doesn't apply as much to SSD since the rebuild time is much less. Bad assumption?

4. If a flash card, what card?

5. Better to move to Solaris and ZFS and skip the cards and pick up other goodies along with? I have only experience with Linux so the move to Solaris would be uncomfortable though doable.