Re[2]: [CentOS] Intel Matrix SATA RAID drivers

-- Best regards, Mickael mailto:mike@kamloopsbc.com Check out my latest videos at www.MickaelMaddison.com Friday, May 27, 2005, 2:19:02 PM, you wrote: BJSbjsio> From: Mickael Maddison mike@kamloopsbc.com >> Hello CentOS, >> Does anyone know if there's a driver out there that'll enable CentOS >> 4.x to use the Intel Matrix SATA RAID settings on the 915 chipsets? BJSbjsio> All FRAID cards do is setup the RAID organization in the 16-bit Int13h BJSbjsio> disk services. In other words, the vendor introduces its own data BJSbjsio> organization for RAID, instead of relying on the OS. BJSbjsio> So there's really no such thing as a RAID driver for any FRAID card BJSbjsio> (Fake/ Free RAID) implementation. It's all BJSbjsio> software RAID. The system BJSbjsio> directly drives the ATA channels, which means the OS uses the standard BJSbjsio> ATA driver. BJSbjsio> That means that the FRAID card must either: BJSbjsio> A) Provide the FRAID logic as a kernel module BJSbjsio> A few do, and it's a massive binary object that BJSbjsio> is kernel build-specific. BJSbjsio> The FRAID logic is licensed from a 3rd party, and that 3rd party makes BJSbjsio> all of its money from that proprietary logic, so it will never be GPL. BJSbjsio> B) Write a data organization/interface wrapper kernel module to Linux's BJSbjsio> ataraid.c FRAID logic module. BJSbjsio> The GPL/reverse engineered hptraid.c, pdcraid.c and silraid.c modules BJSbjsio> are examples that don't work well at all, and only for a few models of BJSbjsio> each. BJSbjsio> C) Write a data organziation/interface wrapper to Linux's LVM/MD BJSbjsio> instead of the ataraid.c logic module. BJSbjsio> This is far more ideal and higher performing, but it makes it OS-specific. BJSbjsio> I believe this might be what the RAIDCore cards do for Linux support. BJSbjsio> Intelligent, hardware RAID don't have to do A-C, because the RAID BJSbjsio> logic is on-board in the firmware, driven directly by an on-board BJSbjsio> microcontroller or ASIC. FRAID cards use your host CPU and software. BJSbjsio> That's why RAID are so cheap and have *0* additional hardware over BJSbjsio> a standard ATA controller. BJSbjsio> -- BJSbjsio> Bryan J. Smith mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org BJSbjsio> _______________________________________________ BJSbjsio> CentOS mailing list BJSbjsio> CentOS@centos.org BJSbjsio> http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos BJSbjsio> __________ NOD32 1.1112 (20050527) Information __________ BJSbjsio> This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system. BJSbjsio> http://www.nod32.com