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From: peter pilsl on 5 Oct 2006 13:23

I'm currently looking for a hardware-raid-solution under linux. I used
software-raid for many years, but in the end I think it brought me at
least as much troubles than it solved me.

I want a SATA-solution, that is supported by all recent 2.6-kernels and
does not need any proprietary driver and it would be nice if its real
hardwareraid and not just softwareraid build into a hardware-driver :)

hotswap would be cool, but I dont know if this is possible with sata.

I looked at some adaptec-solutions and they support only certain
suse-version up to suse7 or suse9. Doesnst sound too well ;)



thnx
peter
From: John-Paul Stewart on 5 Oct 2006 14:04
peter pilsl wrote:
> I'm currently looking for a hardware-raid-solution under linux. I used
> software-raid for many years, but in the end I think it brought me at
> least as much troubles than it solved me.
>
> I want a SATA-solution, that is supported by all recent 2.6-kernels and
> does not need any proprietary driver and it would be nice if its real
> hardwareraid and not just softwareraid build into a hardware-driver :)

3ware offers some nice, real hardware RAID cards. The drivers are
provided with the generic kernel.org sources.

> hotswap would be cool, but I dont know if this is possible with sata.
>
> I looked at some adaptec-solutions and they support only certain
> suse-version up to suse7 or suse9. Doesnst sound too well ;)

Adaptec probably doesn't need to support other, newer distros. In all
likelihood the drivers for the cards are in newer, stock kernels. Those
older distros are probably the ones for which Adaptec provided
downloadable drivers before they were incorporated into mainstream
kernels. Most (if not all) of Adaptec's current SATA RAID cards are
supported by the open source "aacraid" driver (which was originally
developed by Adaptec themselves). Any recent distro will support the
Adaptec cards.

Note also that at least some of LSI Logic's MegaRAID SATA cards are
supported with the opensource "megaraid" driver and are also true
hardware RAID cards.

So you've got 3ware, Adaptec, and LSI Logic to choose from (at least).
From: Henrik Carlqvist on 5 Oct 2006 14:27
peter pilsl <pilsl(a)goldfisch.at> wrote:
> I'm currently looking for a hardware-raid-solution under linux.

There are boxes that can be filled with SATA disks and connect to a host
computer by SCSI or FC. Those boxes have built in raid controllers which
makes the entire box look like one single big SCSI disk. This kind of
soultion is more expensive than a raid controller card together with
internal disks but you get nice features like redundant and hot swappable
power supplies, fans and disks.

Examle of such boxes:

http://www.easyraid.com/?RAID-Products
http://www.nexsan.com/products/products/sataboy/index.html

regards Henrik
--
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root(a)variousus.net root(a)localhost

From: Michael Heiming on 5 Oct 2006 15:43
In comp.os.linux.hardware peter pilsl <pilsl(a)goldfisch.at>:

> I'm currently looking for a hardware-raid-solution under linux. I used
> software-raid for many years, but in the end I think it brought me at
> least as much troubles than it solved me.

> I want a SATA-solution, that is supported by all recent 2.6-kernels and
> does not need any proprietary driver and it would be nice if its real
> hardwareraid and not just softwareraid build into a hardware-driver :)

> hotswap would be cool, but I dont know if this is possible with sata.

> I looked at some adaptec-solutions and they support only certain
> suse-version up to suse7 or suse9. Doesnst sound too well ;)

Adaptec as well as 3ware controller are usually supported by
there GPL driver coming with almost any distro kernel. You just
need to download separately the tools to maintain the controller.

At least Adaptec allows with certain controller to update
firmware from the running OS, though you need to reboot to get it
running. But a great time saver instead of walking up to the
systems and using some vendor supplied doze floppy...

If price isn't your primary concern I'd go with Adaptec (SCSI)
or/and 3ware (SATA).

Unsure about your problems with softraid, works great for me,
despite a little more work if some hd breaks. On the upside it is
a little more flexible, Ie. you don't need exactly the same hd
with RAID I in case of failure. Bigger doesn't matter unlike hw
raid controller which usually need the same hd. Not all hw
controller allow to clone a system like softraid does easily.

If you have a bunch of various controllers on different systems
which isn't unlikely after some time, it can get a little
confusing. Softraid on the other hand is always the same. On the
downside you need a little more care to get hot-swap working with
softraid, while hw controller (at least SCSI*) do this very
easily.

*Some SATA hw RAID controller can do hot-plug but I haven't used
it, so I can't really comment on it...

Good luck

--
Michael Heiming (X-PGP-Sig > GPG-Key ID: EDD27B94)
mail: echo zvpunry(a)urvzvat.qr | perl -pe 'y/a-z/n-za-m/'
#bofh excuse 55: Plumber mistook routing panel for decorative
wall fixture
From: Whoever on 5 Oct 2006 19:34


On Thu, 5 Oct 2006, Michael Heiming wrote:

> In comp.os.linux.hardware peter pilsl <pilsl(a)goldfisch.at>:
>
>> I'm currently looking for a hardware-raid-solution under linux. I used
>> software-raid for many years, but in the end I think it brought me at
>> least as much troubles than it solved me.
>
>> I want a SATA-solution, that is supported by all recent 2.6-kernels and
>> does not need any proprietary driver and it would be nice if its real
>> hardwareraid and not just softwareraid build into a hardware-driver :)
>
>> hotswap would be cool, but I dont know if this is possible with sata.
>
>> I looked at some adaptec-solutions and they support only certain
>> suse-version up to suse7 or suse9. Doesnst sound too well ;)
>
> Adaptec as well as 3ware controller are usually supported by
> there GPL driver coming with almost any distro kernel. You just
> need to download separately the tools to maintain the controller.
>
> At least Adaptec allows with certain controller to update
> firmware from the running OS, though you need to reboot to get it
> running. But a great time saver instead of walking up to the
> systems and using some vendor supplied doze floppy...
>
> If price isn't your primary concern I'd go with Adaptec (SCSI)
> or/and 3ware (SATA).

I have recently installed 2 systems, both with hardware RAID. One used an
Adaptec card and the other used 3Ware. These are comparable, recent cards
(Adaptec 2820SA, 3Ware 9550SX). Both systems were based on similar (or
identical) Supermicro motherboards with AMD CPUs.

The Adaptec system seems to give very poor performance while accessing a
large number of small files. To run mkfs took many hours on this system
and it takes about 10 hours to run a verify.

In contrast, the 3Ware system seems much faster. mkfs ran quite quickly, a
verify takes only a couple of hours and I have not seen any performance
issues at all.

Currently, I am trying to figure out what to do with the Adaptec system. I
have also seem some hard lockups with this system. Exactly why this is
happening, I have no clue, but I suspect it is related to the RAID
controller.
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