Keyword there is "most". I've actually had pretty good results with Intel's onboard Matrix RAID functionality, so long as you know its limitations, namely:
1. No ability to set up e-mail alerts when a drive has failed 2. No ability to set reconstruction/rebuild priorities--it's always 100%, which murders productivity during the process 3. No dedicated write cache for RAID5 and no BBU--but this one is fairly obvious. I have several "real" RAID cards at home (Areca, LSI) that I use for arrays that have parity, but Matrix RAID does a nice job with basic mirroring or striping, and I prefer it over software RAID. Interestingly, when you enable write caching in an Intel Matrix RAID R5 array, which uses your system memory and has no data protection via BBU, it actually performs fairly well, reaching around 100MB/s sustained writes. Pitiful compared to the 1200MB/s or more you can get on today's high-end controllers, but not bad for an onboard solution. Obviously, you put your data at great risk using write-back caching without a BBU, which makes it little more than an interesting footnote. On the other hand, I've seen other onboard RAID solutions (Silicon Image, and especially nVidia) fail at RAID1 in the most fundamental way--everything appears great, but it's not actually performing writes to one of the members. Greg > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] [mailto:hardware- > [email protected]] On Behalf Of Bryan Seitz > Sent: Monday, August 09, 2010 11:31 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [H] Pending conversion? > > Onboard 'raid' is like using 'mspaint' for professional photo editing. Just > because it's there doesn't mean you should use it. Most onboard raid is utter > garbage and can end up doing more harm than good. I would choose > software raid over cheap onboard garbage any day. In fact, software raid > isn't a bad idea here Duncan, however you will need a 'server' OS like > win2k3/2k8. > > On Mon, Aug 09, 2010 at 11:39:42PM -0400, Eli Allen wrote: > > I don't understand why you want a raid controller. Are you really > > doing anything that is disk i/o bound? or is it to keep from losing > > data? Would seem like almost any modern m/b with low end CPU would > be > > faster and you can just use the built in raid to do a mirrored raid. > > > > > > > > On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 10:26 PM, DSinc <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Bryan, > > > I will print and parse your suggestions. ?Afraid I may be even more > behind. > > > The best I can offer are PCI-66 slots on an old Intel STL2 m/b > > > (think this is ServerWerz chipset/design). ?Know this may be way > > > past its' prime, but this beast just will not die. > > > Yes, I may be trying to beat a horse that ain't quite dead yet..... > > > Still learning. ?I'll get back to you. Let me parse, absorb, and, think. > > > ?There are a few times when Technology can just suck! > > > Thanks, > > > Duncan > > > > > -- > > Bryan G. Seitz
