SMART - for your multitude of disks
Unlike the bad old days, modern hard disks are quite reliable. We use them in multitude on our workstations and servers. Standalone, RAID, SCSI, ATA… whatever configuration you may have, there is a common thread. Chances are, your hard disk is enabled with S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) This underutilized tool can improve your overall reliability, coupled with the right utilities.
Any way to increase your insight into a drives health is critical if you are concerned about uptime. According to a citation in Wikipedia from Seagate:
Mechanical failures, which are usually predictable failures, account for 60 percent of drive failure.
Distilling this idea to the core, all drives constantly monitor for an impending failure. In a user environment where reboots are a regular occurence, your bios may catch this failure in time. However, when using a unix/linux server, you will want to keep a watch on any hints from the drive. Enter Smartmontools.
In true Sourceforge nature, crossplatform instructions are included for smartmontools. This small utility simply polls your drives for any failure state indicators at specified time intervals. From here, you can instruct the daemon to log your events and issue notifications via email. Full instructions available on a superb writeup on Howtoforge.
Can we compare your “SMART” disks to human memory and “SMART goals” as in the business world? Maybe we humans should have self-monitoring analytical reporting technology at our disposal?
Comment by A.Z. — April 25, 2008 @ 11:59 pm
Hmmmmm…..
“self-monitoring analytical reporting technology”?
But, wouldn’t that constantly remind me that the next cookie was not in my long term best interest?
Comment by Burkert — June 25, 2008 @ 9:55 pm