Software or hardware RAID1. (gstripe)

[pete wright]

On Sun, 29 Aug 2004 12:45:44 +0000, Thordur I. <thib at mi.is> wrote:
> Subhro wrote:
> 
> >On Sat, 28 Aug 2004 20:39:36 +0000, Thordur I. <thib at mi.is> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >>I think I will go for a hardware raid controler (RAID5 sounds good, but
> >>my budget doesn´t really allow me to buy 2x new disks ;).
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Well, I would say... postpond your RAID for a few weeks and gather the
> >money to buy the disks. On a mission critical system, a RAID -5 is
> >really worth in both stability, performance and fault tolerance.
> >
> >
> >
> >>Btw. What hardware raid controlers (sata) do you listmembers recommend ?
> >>
> >>
> >
> >There are very few things which really dont work under FreeBSD. Just
> >some work out of the box and some needs a little attention like a
> >misbehaved kid. The fact is, the more bucks you throw in, the better
> >facilities u get.
> >
> >
> >
> >>I have read some positive things about the 3ware 9xxx and 8xxx series (a
> >>thread on -stable)
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Yeh, they work almost out of the box without any requirement for tweaking.
> >
> >
> >
> Actually, my situation is not "mission-critcal", still in a way it is. I
> have decided to go for a RAID5 controler (3ware 9xxxx) and simple wait a
> few weeks until I have gatherd the funds :)
> 
i have used the 3ware cards in various production environments and
have a comments.  They seem to work pretty well in a RAID5 config,
altho I would not suggest using them in a stripe.  The cache on the
controller is just too small.  You may see some negative impacts of
the small cache in a RAID5 config under heavy I/O loads but with RAID5
slower I/O performance is to be expected.  I believe the Adaptec IDE
cards have a larger cache on the board, altho I'm not %100 on this.

On the bright side the 3ware cards are pretty common and the "twe"
driver seems rock solid on 4.x.  I have not had a chance to play with
the 9xxxx cards so I do not know how stable the driver for that device
is.


> When you say "almost" out of the box what do you mean ?
> I think I´m right when I say that there are drivers ready for the 3ware
> cards so I do not see why there are any proplems besides overstepping
> the learning curve.
> 
In my experience if you have the driver enabled in your kernel (twe
for the older 3ware cards) then the disk devices should be recognized.
 You actually build/configure the RAID's on the cards firmware before
you load the OS, so there should not be *too* much to do w/in FreeBSD
itself.

> Anyway I think you and the other listmembers again for there input.
> 

have fun!

-p
> 
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-- 
~~o0OO0o~~
Pete Wright
www.nycbug.org
NYC's *BSD User Group