Re: ide hardware raid

[Steve Cooper]

RAIDZONE www.raidzone.com is a full function RAID solution that runs under Linux (and Windows NT) using IDE (Ultra ATA) disk drives.    RAIDZONE features include:   1) Full Hotswap/HotSpare support. RAIDZONE includes SMARTCAN enclosures that provide complete monitoring and control of individual disk drives. Under software control any given drive can be powered down for removal and replacement without affecting the operation of any other drive. The SMARTCAN includes sensing circuitry to detect the removal and  the re-insertion of a drive and can thus automatically re-energize the slider unit.    2) Support for drive level RAID0, RAID1, RAID5 and RAID10.   3) RAIDZONE BIOS provides support for bootstrap of all supported RAID levels.    4) Expandability. Current RAIDZONE technology will allow you to configure a 40 disk drive Linux server. Using the 37GB IBM Ultra ATA 66 disk drives that's not too shabby. Current non-production hardware (that exists today) increases that limit to 80 disk drives. Other technology in development will eliminate current limitations entirely.    5) Performance. Each disk drive has it's own bus-mastering data path to system memory. RAIDZONE only uses disk drives in their MASTER mode - NO SLAVES. Performance is limited by contention for PCI memory bandwidth and (at least under Linux 2.2.X) the double copy that takes place between the system buffer cache and user space. Under Windows NT we have observed sustained sequential read throughput of greater than 110Mbytes/sec. Bonnie numbers for a 7-way RAID5 using 31GB IBM (7200 rpm) drives in a Intel 440BX motherboard with dual 450Mhz PIIIs are 30Mbytes/sec writing and 70 Mbytes/sec reading.    6) Administration: RAIDZONE includes a Java based GUI for monitoring and configuring the RAIDZONE disk sub-system. This can be used locally or remotely over the network.    7) Price. When compared to other full function SCSI based RAID solutions RAIDZONE has a cost advantage due to the lower cost of Ultra ATA 66 disk  drives versus SCSI disk drives with similar performance and capacity.     Steve Cooper <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Directory of Software Engineering, Consensys Computers Inc.  -----Original Message----- From: Terry Ewing <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Wednesday, December 01, 1999 6:18 PM Subject: ide hardware raid  >Hello, >    I'm an administrator in a co-location facility and recently we had a >customer come in to replace a raid card.  The only catch was the RAID card >was IDE.  This was on an NT box, but I was wondering: > >1) what IDE RAID cards are out there now.  What is known about them. > >2) What is the status of Linux support for IDE RAID cards. > >Thanks!