Using a RAID-card with FreeBSD

[David Landgren]

Johan Paul wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> This might be kind of a newbie question - I apologize for that.
> 
> This is my first time I use a hardware RAID card on a server. I was 
> wondering if there are any issues with FreeBSD (4.8R) regarding these 
> cards? Will FreeBSD see the RAID1 as a single hard drive that I just 
> need to partition and label? And if I need to replace a failed hard 

Yes, it just sees a single ordinary drive.

> drive in the RAID array I assume the card will do the rebuilding of the 
> array while FreeBSD will function as normal even when I need to reboot 
> the machine?

Yes, the RAIDing is completely transparent to the OS. You don't even 
have to reboot the machine if the disks are hot-swappable. Just pull the 
dead one out, install the new one, and the controller will bring it up 
to speed. RAID-1 is much faster to rebuild than RAID-5 (just a casual 
observation; I'm not sure if that's a hard-and-fast rule).

> I checked that the card I intended to use (Promise FastTrak TX2) is 
> supported by FreeBSD so I don't assume any problems installing FreeBSD 
> either.
> 
> Thanks for any answers :-)

you're welcome.

David