Speaking from experience (I cannot go into detail on this point), and as
Digimer pointed out, LSI seems to be the only choice for enterprise level,
large scale deployments.
If your concern is extremely long term deployments with verifiable data
recovery options, software RAID is the only option, as you have strong
guarantees that the implementation will never "die" as hardware RAID
controllers are likely to do.
As others have pointed out, there are indeed tangible benefits to using
hardware RAID controllers. It all depends on your use case and project
requirements.
On May 8, 2016 6:51 PM, "Valeri Galtsev" <galtsev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Sun, May 8, 2016 8:42 pm, Digimer wrote:
> > On 08/05/16 09:02 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
> >>
> >> On Sun, May 8, 2016 7:31 pm, Digimer wrote:
> >>> On 08/05/16 08:12 PM, John R Pierce wrote:
> >>>> On 5/6/2016 2:26 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
> >>>>> Which internal hardware RAID controllers will survive some future to
> >>>>> come
> >>>>> in your estimate. First of all my beloved 3ware finally seems to have
> >>>>> passed away. After multiple acquisitions and becoming part of LSI and
> >>>>> getting bought with LSI, it probably became non operational. Namely,
> >>>>> the
> >>>>> latest 3ware cards have ancient firmware. Neither of them supports
> >>>>> 4kn
> >>>>> drives. This speaks for itself for me. [Under new ownership] LSI,
> >>>>> though
> >>>>> still having new controllers released, and one of their MegaRAID
> >>>>> controllers (at least) having support for 4kn drives, still may not
> >>>>> last
> >>>>> long (just my feeling, I'd like to hear yours). So, what RAID
> >>>>> controllers
> >>>>> will those of us who like to have hardware RAIDs use in some future
> >>>>> to
> >>>>> come?
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> IMHO, "Hardware" (really embedded firmware) RAID is for Windows
> >>>> servers,
> >>>> since MS Windows has awful integrated software raid (aka 'dynamic
> >>>> disk',
> >>>> truly a mess). With Linux, I'd rather use LVM, with BSD, ZFS.
> >>>
> >>> "Hardware RAID" can very well include a controller with dedicated
> >>> parity
> >>> processing, battery/flash backed write caching and other tangible
> >>> benefits.
> >>
> >> Right, by "hardware RAID" as opposed to a bit more often used term
> >> "software RAID" I did mean the card that has RAID processing done by the
> >> chip on board of the card (parity or in other words modulus 2 sum in
> >> case
> >> of RAID-5, and more sophisticated math in case of RAID-6 - I have heard
> >> of
> >> at least two algorithms suitable for RAID-6). Thanks, Mr. Digimer, for
> >> clarifying my somewhat vague in this place post.
> >
> > We're not all "Mr".
>
> Sorry, my usual stupidity... Some time I hopefully learn to be, hm...
> "wiser"?
>
> >
> >> Any insight, anybody, which hardware RAID cards of rather which
> >> manufacturers of these cards will still make them in a future (say next
> >> 5
> >> years)? Even if you just have feelings, without any thought why, I would
> >> like to hear them. If you prefer to answer off the list, please, e-mail
> >> me
> >> directly at galtsev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >>
> >> Thanks a lot!
> >>
> >> Valeri
> >
> > LSI brand cards are very common across enterprise (I think all tier-1
> > vendors, except HP, use LSI (now Avago) based controllers. Given that, I
> > would expect their cards will be available for quite some time to come.
>
> Thanks a lot for your insights! This already makes me feel better. In the
> past LSI would be my definite second choice, and 3ware was winning me only
> by their transparent web interface. (Several other things LSI had better
> than 3ware IMHO...)
>
> Thanks again!
>
> Valeri
>
> >
> > --
> > Digimer
> > Papers and Projects: https://alteeve.ca/w/
> > What if the cure for cancer is trapped in the mind of a person without
> > access to education?
> > _______________________________________________
> > CentOS mailing list
> > CentOS@xxxxxxxxxx
> > https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
> >
>
>
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> Valeri Galtsev
> Sr System Administrator
> Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
> Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
> University of Chicago
> Phone: 773-702-4247
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> _______________________________________________
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS@xxxxxxxxxx
> https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>
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