Another route you can go is getting a PCI/PCIe/PCI-X BBU RAM/NVRAM card to put an external journal on to speed up fsync performance for filesystems like ext3 over software raid since these cards can go beyond 1GB of memory unlike hardware raid cards that usually max out at 256MB.
What are some of these BBU NVRAM cards that I keep hearing people talk about? I would love to check them out.
http://www.umem.com/Umem_NVRAM_Cards.html http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Storage/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID...
Weird...I thought the umem cards were more than just BBU SDRAM but...hmm...
Software RAID is also good if you need to be able to transfer the disks to another box that does not have a hardware raid controller or the same controller.
Weigh these in your decision. :-)
For 2 SATA hard disks used for the OS I think HW RAID is overkill.
Depends. HW RAID + BBU CACHE vs SW RAID vs SW RAID + NVRAM...You cannot say overkill in certain cases.
Besides I do not believe the PERC 5IR has BBU cache, that controller is really only meant as a simple RAID1 controller for the OS.
Dell certainly has a BBU cache option, not sure if OP's Poweredge box has that option.
If you use HW RAID you will need to install the manufacturer's software for monitoring it for a hard disk failure.
Yes, likely a negative but with Dell supporting Linux maybe not so.
If you wanted to add additional storage, say a SAS/SATA enclosure of 15 disks, then I would definitely invest in a HW RAID card for that!
Depends :-D. How many hardware RAID cards offer 1GB of cache?