[thelist] [OT] Hardware question about RAID...

[Peter Loron]

Tris, you can go two routes: software raid or hardware raid.

Software has the advantage (under linux anyway) of being standardized  
and easy. If you decide to switch from Ubuntu to Fedora, your raid  
will still work just fine. No drivers to worry about, no additional  
hardware to worry about failing, etc.

The principle downside is that there is a CPU hit for the parity  
calculations. On a moderately fast machine, it's not a big deal,  
although if you are really going for serious write throughput, you  
might not want to go this way.


Hardware cards are nice because they offload all of that work from the  
machine. In some instances they can offer better performance, and you  
can get them with large onboard RAM caches, and battery backups. The  
downsides include cost, and drivers. If you decide to go hardware, I  
highly recommend 3Ware cards.

-Pete

On May 7, 2008, at 8:17 AM, Tris wrote:

> Thanks all...!
> I'm 'upgrading' my system to replace all my external drives, I plan to
> have 6 x 1Tb drives, raid 5 or 6.
> Giving me 4.5Tb roughly, which is about 1Tb more than I need, but
> that'll fill up quickly I'm sure.
> I wanted it to show up as one drive of 4.5Tb. the case I've purchased
> has hot swapable bays, so when a drive goes to heaven, I can easily
> replace it and not loose data. (hopefully ;-p )
> Buuuuut, I've opted for this:
> http://www.xcase.co.uk/p/394553/3ware-9650se-8ml---8-port-satasas-controller-no-cables---pci-express-sf8087.html
>
> And if I'm reading correctly, I can only make increments of 2Tb...
> (due to a windows and linux kernel 2.4 issue)
> I'm new to Linux (havng installed ubuntu last weekend) but guess if I
> upgrade to 2.6, I'll be fine..
>
> I guess that's it, I have to get a dedicated card...
> But the advise thus far has been great... cheers!!
>
> Tris...
>
>
>
>
> 2008/5/7 Norman Bunn <norman.bunn at craftedsolutions.com>:
>>
>> Tris wrote:
>>> Hi all...
>>> I'm building my first PC..
>>> I want to use a RAID configuration and see that many motherboards
>>> offer raid 5 as standard.
>>> This is what I was after, but assumed I'd need a raid card to do  
>>> that.
>>>
>>> so my question is, will a motherboard such as:
>>> http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Motherboards/Socket+775+%28Intel%29/Gigabyte+GA-P35-DS3L+iP35+Express+%28775%29+Motherboard+?productId=30549
>>>
>>> Offer me a reliable raid set up?
>>> I've just using it to host media through my house, so the load  
>>> will be
>>> minimal...
>>>
>>> Any tech heads out there, know what's what?
>>>
>>> Tris...
>>>
>> My personal feeling is that onboard components, while fine in some
>> respects (less expensive), are typically inferior to add-on units  
>> that
>> are specifically tailored to your needs.  As an example, my son's  
>> PC has
>> onboard RAID, and it has given him nothing but trouble, while a
>> dedicated RAID 5 NAS I have just keeps on ticking.
>>
>> ---
>>
>> Norman W. Bunn
>> norman.bunn at craftedsolutions.com
>> 803.405.1008
>> ----------------------------------------------
>> www.CraftedSolutions.com
>> Crafted Solutions, Inc.
>> Web Design & Development
>> Web Site Hosting & Custom Solutions
>> "Get the results the Internet promises;
>>  get the 'Net Result' from Crafted Solutions!"
>> ----------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
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