On Tue, Feb 19, 2002 at 02:44:36PM -0500, Chris Mauritz wrote: > > I suppose there is an exception to everything. However, I don't > think your friend's experience was typical. Software RAID can be > "easy" if you let something like Redhat's anaconda do all the dirty > work and then you don't fiddle with the system. However, when you > need to do anything to the kernel or if you have problems with a disk > or conflicting versions of software/kernel, it can be a complete pain > in the ass (I have been using Linux software RAID since 1997 or so). > My experience has been that RAID frequently gets broken as the kernel > matures so you have to be extremely careful about updating things. > In contrast, my RAID installs onto 3ware and Mylex hardware RAID cards > have been relatively uneventful, even when drives have failed down the > road. Based upon my limited experience with basically the same types of setups (software RAID, 3Ware and Mylex RAID cards) I have to agree. I'd be very scared if the software-RAID boot disk failed, but if a disk failed on my hardware controller, the array still looks the same to the software so booting up won't be a problem. Say you had a simple RAID1 setup mirroring /dev/hda and /dev/hdc and /dev/hda goes out. What do you do, then? With a hardware RAID controller you don't have to worry about it, but maybe I just don't have the right knowledge in this case. Can you plug /dev/hdc into /dev/hda, put the new drive into /dev/hdc? What about LILO/GRUB? According to the Software RAID HOWTO the best alternative is to use a floppy to boot, but floppies aren't exactly known for their reliability. Also, can you boot off anything other than RAID1? The howto doesn't say you can... Now if you want a RAID setup on a non-boot disk, then I don't hesitate at all to recommend software RAID, I have this running on a number of machines here at work. -Dave - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
