Hardware RAID Cards..

[Toomas Aas]

Aaron C. Meadows wrote:

> I have an IBM Netfinity 5000 server I just picked up, and it has an
> Adaptec AAA-131U2 (aic7815 chipset) RAID card in it, attached to 5 IBM
> Branded (Seagate ST39204LC) Hot Swap Ultra160 9.1gig SCSI Harddrives.
> 
> My question is, since that chipset is unsupported for hardware RAID,
> would I be better off to software RAID them, or get a different RAID card?
> 
> Contingent question is, if I should get another RAID card, what would
> be a good, supported, entry level card?  This server will be purposed
> as a webserver for a small webhosting company, maybe 100 sites on it.
> Running Postfix,Bind,Apache2,PHP,Postgresql,etc

I'm running a Netfinity 5000 with IBM ServeRAID 3L adapter. I won't say 
it's good (it lacks any kind of online RAID management or monitoring 
from within FreeBSD AFAICT), but it works and is definitely 'entry 
level'. This machine works as a webmail/IMAP server for ~150 users, 
listserver hosting ~50 mailing lists and as incoming mail 
scanner/gateway (postfix+amavisd+spamassassin+clamav) for another mail 
server with ca 500 users. Getting it to work with FreeBSD 5.2.1 was a 
pain, but 5.3 seems to run good. Doesn't boot with ACPI enabled, though.

As to other suggestions made in this thread, they don't seem to be 
relevant for Netfinity 5000 since I can't think of a way to use ATA 
drives in this machine.
---
... When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.