[Novalug] Linux Hardware RAID Server Advice

Chris Rogers toxicpig@gmail.com
Wed Apr 23 21:02:35 EDT 2014


http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007607%2050001642&IsNodeId=1

I cannot say enough good things about 3Ware raid cards.  I've used them for
nearly a decade now in at least a dozen RAID builds as shared storage
backends for XenServer clusters.  They are simply ROCK SOLID.  Make sure
you get the battery backup add on for the card, couple it with a good
supermicro case (which can interface its backplane directly with the card
with an extra cable), and throw in your favorite mobo/CPU/memory combo.  I
have had the occasional drive failure, as one might expect, but the card
handles the bypass and replacement beautifully.

Chris



On Wed, Apr 23, 2014 at 3:38 PM, Scott Talbert <swt@techie.net> wrote:

> I'm not sure about performance with SSD's.  I've only used RAID-1 with
> hard drives, and I didn't do any scientific benchmarks.
>
>
> On Wed, 23 Apr 2014, Igor Birman wrote:
>
>  I am getting to the same conclusion about software RAID.  Is there a
>> significant performance difference between software and hardware RAID when
>> using Raid-1 with SSD drives?
>>
>> Igor
>> On Wednesday, April 23, 2014 3:25 PM, Scott Talbert <swt@techie.net>
>> wrote:
>> On Wed, 23 Apr 2014, Igor Birman wrote:
>>
>> > I tried to spec out a Linux server that supports hardware RAID and have
>> > found it surprisingly difficult to track down a server that will support
>> > RAID out of the box.  Ubuntu supplies a link to this site which was last
>> > updated in 2007: http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html  What is
>> the
>> > latest word on hardware RAID?  We looked at HP servers, but they only
>> work
>> > with HP RAM and HP Drives.  Lenovo makes some nice servers but don't
>> support
>> > RAID on the motherboards.  I can get SuperMicro hardware, and they do
>> list
>> > some motherboards with some RAID support, but it's not easy to find one
>> that
>> > is reasonably priced. I am finding it hard to source RAID cards.  Any
>> good
>> > advice?
>>
>>
>> The question is: why do you want hardware RAID?  Most of the
>> on-motherboard "hardware" RAID out there is not true hardware RAID.
>> There are some real hardware RAID cards out there, but even if you use one
>> of those, and say, your RAID card fails, you need to get another card of
>> that model in order to read your disks.  In my server I have an Adaptec
>> 2420SA controller (it is pretty dated at this point - not sure if it is
>> even still available), but I'm going to be removing that soon and just
>> using Linux's software RAID.
>>
>>
>>
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-- 

Chris

--
The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.
--Albert Einstein
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