[ale] SSD speeds

[Chris Fowler]

Yesterday I received two systems we ordered and installed CentOS 6.5 on 
them.  I am ignorant of SSD speeds and these systems have 2 128gb/ea I'm 
running as RAID1 via mdtools. I'm amazed at the speed compared to the 
SATA II/III drives I've been using.

In the past we've used drives because we wanted space.  In this project 
I would be happy with a 20GB SSD so space is not an issue.  I decided to 
give it a try. I like them.

Are write speeds slower that standard drives?  Is there any reason I 
should not move forward with this model of using SSD in our systems vs 
real drives?

I do have rant about CentOS 6.5 text install.  I've googled it and I 
understand why it is like this I just hate that I could do this in 5, 
but not 6.

I've installed many CentOS 5 systems around the world.  In some cases I 
need to reinstall them.  I may be going to an older Fedora system to 
CentOS.  Or I may have corruption.   I may even install new hardware.   
What I do is create a serial bootable CD.  I then place a device on the 
server's serial port, connect remotely to it, and have the customer boot 
the CD.  I can now install in text mode remotely.  If I'm working on a 
system that has already been loaded I'll copy vmlinuz and initrd.img to 
it, modify grub meny.lst and then boot that entry.

This works on CentOS 6 up until I get to partitioning disks.  You can 
not do custom partitioning any more via text.  I had to install the 
system in my lab last night via VNC.  This complicates these remote 
installs because I have to figure out a way to gain remote IP access.  I 
think the only solution is to create a kickstart file.  On a new system 
that the customer purchases I will need to know about the drives before 
I can create the file to partition them.  Forcing a graphical install 
just sucks and to me that is anti-server and pro-desktop.

Just my rant, ignore it. :)

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