On Fri, Aug 21, 2026 at 5:25 AM Otto Cooper <[email protected]> wrote:
> Anybody using it with openbsd? > Yes. Hardware RAID has certain advantages over software RAID, but it also has disadvantages. I use Dell PERC RAID controllers in Dell servers; they work fine in OpenBSD and the RAID volumes show up in the OS as regular disks (sd0, sd1, etc.) If a drive fails and you don't have a hot spare configured you can simply remove the dead drive and install a new one and the array will rebuild automatically (assuming you have hot-swappable drive bays) without any need for reconfiguration or reboot. You do have to have a plan for what to do in case of a server/controller failure. Will you be able to get spares years from now? If you have doubts you may want to keep (tested) spares on-hand so you don't need to scramble to find them later. Do not assume with hardware RAID that it will be easy to migrate an existing array to another server unless the new server is the same model, with the same controller, running the same firmware. And with hardware RAID, configuration changes will generally require you to take the server down and reboot into BIOS setup, or boot into an alternative OS (e.g. Windows) to run a configuration utility. With software RAID many configuration changes can be done while the server is running and on-line. And of course, RAID (both hardware and software) is not a substitute for backups. My fallback in case of unrecoverable hardware failure is my backups. -ken
