RAID on HP ML110 G5

[Tom Munro Glass]

On Tue, 25 Mar 2008, Nejc Škoberne wrote:
> Hey Tom,
>
> > I would like to run FreeBSD 7 on a HP ML110 G5. I understand from past
> > posts to this list that the ML110 series is FreeBSD friendly, but what
> > about RAID 1 using the on-board SATA controller? Will this work and how
> > do you set this up?
>
> I have just configured a ML110G5 with FreeBSD 7 a few days ago. If you try
> to make a BIOS RAID (create an array in RAID controller BIOS), then FreeBSD
> won't recognize it as it does not understand the metadata format which
> controller BIOS uses to manage the arrays. What you have to do is (having
> RAID mode in BIOS still enabled) boot the server with FreeBSD 7 CD and then
> go to Fixit utility. There you can create "hardware" (see previous posts
> about this being hardware RAID) RAID with "atacontrol" utility. This way,
> FreeBSD will use its own metadata format for the array and will recognize
> such arrays as "arX" devices. Restarting the box you can then install
> FreeBSD easily on these arX devices like on normal adX or daX devices. So
> remember, this is not the "real" FreeBSD software RAID since it is not
> controlled by FreeBSD kernel but by the SATA/RAID controller. For example,
> I have 4 drives and I created RAID-0 (stripes) with atacontrol and will
> merge them (in a few days) into a RAID-1 gmirror.
>
> Hope that helps,
> Nejc

Thanks to all who replied. Since it is possible to use the SATA RAID but it 
isn't true hardware RAID, is it better to use the SATA RAID or use gmirror?

Regards

Tom