FreeBSD 6.0 as storage server with raid5?

[Torfinn Ingolfsen]

On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 17:51:02 +0100 (CET)
Oliver Fromme <olli at lurza.secnetix.de> wrote:

> There's no reason why you shouldn't be able to do that.

Noted. Good to know. :-)

> Note that the HPT 18x0A have an onboard processor which
> does the XOR (parity) calculations for RAID-5.  For the
> non-A versions, the host CPU has to do those calculations
> (in the driver), which can be quite a noticable burden.

Noted, this is valuable information, thanks!
I found a test:
http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/20040625/sata-raid-04.html
and this test confirms that the RocketRAID 1640 is software raid only.

> Some controllers have a setting to enable staged starting
> of the drives, i.e. one after the other.  This can reduce
> the maximum PSU requirement considerably if you have a
> lot of disks.

Noted, I'll look out for this.

> PS:  I assume you already know this, but I'd like to note
> this for all readers:  RAID (of any kind) does not replace
> reliable backups.  Always make proper backups, independent
> of your RAID (if any).

I agree 100%, and this cannot be told to often.
In my case, the backup server will probably be another FreeBSD box with
external firewire drives, to keep costs down.
-- 
Regards,
Torfinn Ingolfsen,
Norway