On Wed, 2006-02-01 at 15:19 +0100, Ramon van Alteren wrote: > >I'm running a software raid spanned over 3 controllers ... I'm not aware > >of a hardware-based solution that even comes close to that flexibility. > How many disks can you put in ? > AFAIK most motherboard interfaces support 4 SATA disks plop in another controller and it's +4 or more :-) The onboard controllers are often cheap (SiL SATA) or broken (VIA KT133), so usually you'll use a "known-good" PCI/PCIe controller to avoid problems.
Right now the case (miditower) is limiting, but if I wanted I could get a Promise TX4 for ~60Eur and add 4 SATA disks. The really cool thing with software raid is that you can just stuff any block device in and it'll work - mix SCSI, IDE, SATA, md - you can stack raid1 over raid0 if you want. Just label all disks so that you know which one just died ... > >But if you need a disk array with maximum performance I'd still suggest > >a hardware-based solution. > Me too :-) > But considering your comments, why ? Looking at benchmarks I can see ~500M/s from good controllers - it'll be hard to get the same level without dedicating a whole CPU to that. SAN boxen have wonderful managment features and belong into the "just work(tm)" category - each linux software raid will have to be consciously put together. A 4U box which plugs in to a SCSI or FC port costs ~5k Eur, the same as Do-it-yourself costs ~1,5k, but you don't get a fully tested solution that really works. You'll have to see what happens if you yank out a disk or two, you'll have to configure monitoring, etc. etc. Now if you are a company you'll pay a small premium just so that you don't have to care about any technical details ... time is money :-) -- Stand still, and let the rest of the universe move
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