On Mon, 2006-08-07 at 16:22 -0600, Andrew Jorgensen wrote: > On 8/7/06, Stuart Jansen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Mon, 2006-08-07 at 13:34 -0700, Hill, Greg wrote: > > > > Unless you invest in a high-end hardware RAID solution like > > > > LSI's MegaRAID or 3Ware, stay away from SATA RAID solutions > > > > > > Is this a linux-only thing or general advice? > > Windows also has software RAID (at least 0 and 1 maybe others). I > have no idea how good or bad it might be but it probably works fine. > I also haven't actually used it so don't ask me for advice. You can't > use it on your system partition though. > > I prefer software RAID because it's usually easier to talk to when > there are problems. Mainly it's easier because you don't have to > install someone's crappy proprietary RAID management tools that aren't > compatible with your libc anyway and read a new set of manuals. > Hardware RAID sometimes has more Enterprise in it though, if you like > that.
We're in the process of looking at Sun's new Thumper storage system (http://www.sun.com/servers/x64/x4500/ ). This machines comes with 48 SATA disks packed in a 4U box. But the interesting aspect of this is that there is *no* RAID controller. Sun doesn't even offer this. Instead thumper uses Solaris and ZFS to carve up the 48 disks into any size of volume you want with any level of redundancy. I guess the Sun buzzword is "RAID-Z." And say what you want about Sun and their marketing hype, but honestly ZFS looks like the way to go for software arrays. At runtime you can shrink and grow volumes (like LVM2) and also change the level of redundancy. The system will redistribute the data stripes automatically. So no more worrying about Raid 1, Raid 10 or Raid 5 or Raid 5+1. Just say 100% redundancy -- the equivalent of RAID-10, or 33% redudancy, or what-have you. Not sure how it will pan out in the real world, but I think this idea has real merit. And the price is right (they will beat Apple's education price for storage). So for many things I think hardware RAID is not that important. Bear in mind the one issue with software RAIDS (which ZFS does not suffer from) is data losses due to how the OS's write caching works (and the drive's cache too). Hardware RAIDs typically have battery-backed memory that can store pending writes if the power fails. I plan on demoing ZFS, so I'll report on it after I do. Michael > > /* > PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net > Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug > Don't fear the penguin. > */ > /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
