Re: [opensuse] SATA RAID recommendations?

[Anders Norrbring]

Greg Freemyer skrev:

On 3/5/07, Anders Norrbring <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Jack Malone skrev:
> At 02:25 PM 3/5/2007, Anders Norrbring wrote:
>> Hans du Plooy skrev:
>>> On Sun, March 4, 2007 22:35, Pascal Bleser wrote:
>>>> Anyhow, stay away from any RAID controller that is cheaper than 1000
>>>> EUR

>>>> them.
>>> 1000 EUR?
>>> http://froogle.google.de/froogle?q=adaptec+2820SA&btnG=Froogle-Suche
>>> And this card is definitely not crap.
>>> Hans
>>
>> I've been doing some digging... Seems like ALL Adaptec SATA and SAS
>> RAID (or not RAID) controllers make use of Adaptec's own closed-source
>> drivers.. *sigh*
>> They provide a "SHIM" kit for users to be able to build a driver for
>> their running kernel, but IMHO that sucks bigtime.. Then I need to
>> bust my ass every time there's a kernel update available.
> I will have to second the votes for using 3ware. Suse has the drivers

> raid cards from them with no problems here at work an home. they work
> like a charm out of the box for me so far. I just do a clean install on

> no problems at all. I use both raid 0 an 10 here with the.
>
>
> jack

I'd like to have an option for non-raid cards as well, 4-8 channels, but
they seem to be hard to find..
I don't care much if it's a SAS or SATA-II card, and I don't care much
about the RAID functionality either since many people say the software
RAID in Linux is really good.

>>>> because it's crap. And yet, software RAID on Linux outperforms most of > built into the system for 3ware raid cards. I have used both ide an sata > a system that I insert the card into an they are seen an recognized with

Before you totally commit to software raid think about what happens
with a drive failure or if you need to boot the SUSE DVD into rescue
mode.

I don't actually know the answers, but those are always my concerns
with software raid.

ie. For booting software raid does not normally provide any tolerance,
and for rescue mode issues I just get nervous.

Basically I don't mind software raid for non-boot drives, but for boot
drives I have always avoided it.

FYI: I've been running RAID-1 3ware boot drives for years.  The 2-port
3ware card is about $100 IIRC.

Greg

--

Anders Norrbring
Norrbring Consulting

Thanks, but this array will be used as storage space only. The system itself with all important system functions and the /home directories are run off SCSI RAID-1 and RAID-5 arrays on LSI Logic SCSI-320 RAID controllers, so that's not an issue here.

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