On Thu, 2005-09-08 at 20:01 -0700, Todd Cary wrote:
> Will I be able to ue software RAID?
FRAID _is_ software RAID.
It just typically uses the FRAID vendor's driver, instead of the OS.
Newer kernel 2.6 developments with Device Mapper (DM) are now able to
read some of the reverse engineered, proprietary FRAID disk organization
and interpret it. Once that is done, the DM implementation can use the
software RAID in the Linux kernel to drive the disk organization -- and
much more efficiently than the FRAID implementation.
FRAID is _rarely_ faster than the OS' native software RAID. And vendors
can _rarely_ offer FRAID drivers for Linux, because they contain
proprietary code for the RAID licensed from 3rd parties. Hence the
continued problem, and the need for solutions like kernel 2.6's DM.
Unfortunately, FRAID models vary in their disk organization, so you
can't always trust these reverse engineered developments. And then you
have the whole kernel volume/software stack, which has race conditions,
etc... that I just don't trust at this point. But I won't go there.
--
Bryan J. Smith b.j.smith@xxxxxxxx http://thebs413.blogspot.com
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