Michael George wrote:
On Mon, Jan 20, 2003 at 03:44:48PM -0600, edwardam@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Sun, Jan 19, 2003 at 06:57:07PM +1100, Steve & Dee McInerney wrote:AFAIK, and I could be wrong. It's a software raid controller. The Promise
I have a FT 100 tx2, and am happy to answer what I can.
Suggest you ask the Q's of the list anyway.
I've found step-by-step instructions for installing RHL7.3 onto a system with all the disks on this controller, and then on to build the kernel with the linux native ataraid controller. That's all cool.
What I'm wondering is:
1. Is this truly a hardware RAID controller? I've seen references to it
being a quasi-hardware RAID solution...
drivers that pretend to be scsi devices (windows and linux) contain all
the software tat does the raid.
And it seems there are linux-native drivers, that's what ataraid is all about AFAIK, that will support it, but apparently they also do the RAID in the driver (software).
Spawns 2 more questions: 1. What is the advantage of having the FastTrack controller? Can't Linux do SW RIAD with the standard ATA controllers on most motherboards?
Well the fasttrak/ultra is a good ata controller that is udma100 or 133. Many older mother boards only have udma33 or 66 on board. If you are buying a card I actually recommend the Ultra100 or Ultra133. (The Ultra is the FastTrak without the raid sillyness.)
2. Are there *any* ATA RAID controllers that really are HW RAID?
Yes all of 3ware's cards, and adaptec's 4 port card. In theroy the supertrak from promise is hw raid.
The 3ware controllers supports hotswap if you have a hotswap drive enclosure. You will still need to go into 3dm or use the cli to mark the drive as removed, actually remove the drive, put a new one in, and use 3dm/cli to add the disk and start a rebuild. This
2. With the hot-swap chassis, can the linux ataraid controller really doDunno about the hot swap. From what I've raid, I'd say no ... But then
the hot-swapping and auto-rebuilding of drives? This is currently how
my customer does backups (yes, I am pushing them to get a tape drive)
and if we cannot do hot-swaps then we'll have to figure something out...
again I could be wrong. ... But...
Odd that no one knows this answer. I thought for sure there would be someone
who would know if hot-swap works or not. If it won't hot-swap, or at least
know when a new disk was cold-swapped, how does the system know which disk to
rebuild when one fails and a new one is put into the system?
-- There is no such thing as obsolete hardware. Merely hardware that other people don't want. (The Second Rule of Hardware Acquisition) Sam Flory <sflory@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
