You've probably missed a discussion on issues I've been having with SATA, software RAID and bad drivers. A clear thing from the responses I got is that you really need to use a recent kernel, as they may have fixed those problems. I didn't get clear responses indicating specific cards that are known to work well when hardrives fail. But if you can deal with a server crashing and then rebooting manually then software RAID is the way to go. I've always been able to get the servers back online even with the problematic drivers. I am happy with the 3ware cards and do use their hardware RAID to avoid the problems that I've had. With those I've fully tested 16 drive systems with 2 arrays using 2 8-port cards. Others have recommended the Areca line. As for cheap "dumb" interfaces I am now using the RocketRAID 2220, which gives you 8 ports on a PCI-X. I believe the "built" in RAID on those is just firmware based so you may as well use them to show the drives in normal/legacy mode and use software RAID on top. Keep in mind I haven't fully tested this solution nor have tested for proper functioning when a drive fails. Another inexpensive card I've used with good results is the Q-stor PCI-X card, but I think this is now obsolete. Hope this helps, Alberto On Tue, 2007-11-06 at 05:20 +0300, Lyle Schlueter wrote: > Hello, > > I just started looking into software raid with linux a few weeks ago. I > am outgrowing the commercial NAS product that I bought a while back. > I've been learning as much as I can, suscribing to this mailing list, > reading man pages, experimenting with loopback devices setting up and > expanding test arrays. > > I have a few questions now that I'm sure someone here will be able to > enlighten me about. > First, I want to run a 12 drive raid 6, honestly, would I be better of > going with true hardware raid like the areca ARC-1231ML vs software > raid? I would prefer software raid just for the sheer cost savings. But > what kind of processing power would it take to match or exceed a mid to > high-level hardware controller? > > I haven't seen much, if any, discussion of this, but how many drives are > people putting into software arrays? And how are you going about it? > Motherboards seem to max out around 6-8 SATA ports. Do you just add SATA > controllers? Looking around on newegg (and some googling) 2-port SATA > controllers are pretty easy to find, but once you get to 4 ports the > cards all seem to include some sort of built in *raid* functionality. > Are there any 4+ port PCI-e SATA controllers cards? > > Are there any specific chipsets/brands of motherboards or controller > cards that you software raid veterans prefer? > > Thank you for your time and any info you are able to give me! > > Lyle > > - > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in > the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html -- Alberto Alonso Global Gate Systems LLC. (512) 351-7233 http://www.ggsys.net Hardware, consulting, sysadmin, monitoring and remote backups - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
