I've been using software RAID-1 for at least two years and just switched to RAID-5 for most of my servers. I've always opted for software RAID because none of hardware IDE controllers seemed to have a way to tell if a drive had failed without the use of a windows program. Does anyone have experience with the HighPoint or 3Ware IDE RAID controllers in a situation where a drive went bad? When your servers are 45 miles away in a cabinet, beeps and blinkin' lights don't help. :) -Kristian On Tue, 19 Feb 2002, Chris Mauritz wrote: > Greg wrote: > > > On Tue, 2002-02-19 at 10:56, Chris Mauritz wrote: > > > However, it is not really that simple, especially when you lose a > > > disk or if you have to upgrade your kernel or if you want to run > > > a recent vintage kernel, etc. A hardware controller is substantially > > > more easy to setup and manage. If you have the time to spend or as > > > much knowledge of the subject as Jakob, then the software RAID > > > implementation can yield very good results too. > > > > Actually, no... A very competent friend was replacing a machine > > recently. For the new machine, he purchased a hardware RAID controller > > (I forget which one), "in order to simplify things". He spent about 10 > > hours trying to make it work, finally gave up, and used software RAID, > > and had the system going 45 minutes later. While there are good > > arguments for using hardware RAID, I don't believe that simplicity is > > one of them. (Speed, however, can be. Stupid raid5d takes up about 25% > > of my processors, but only when the system is under load, bleah). > > 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. > > Again, if you're comfortable fondling the kernel and keep up to date > with the raid/kernel mailing lists, you can indeed get a nice/fast > implementation of software RAID. With the advent of reliable IDE > RAID cards and dirt cheap IDE disks, I haven't felt the need to go > to all that effort in quite some time. > > Cheers, > > C > -- > Chris Mauritz > ritz@mordor.net > - > 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 > - 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
