On 2015-05-28, Valeri Galtsev galtsev@kicp.uchicago.edu wrote:
Now, seriously: of more than a couple of dozens of cards I used during last about 13 years not a single one died on me.
I have had a couple dozen hardware RAID controllers over the years. I have not had the success you've had, but I've had very few hard failures. I have had one data loss event, where a bad BBU was causing problems with an old controller (of course I had backups, as should everyone). I've had two other controllers just die, but replacing it was easy, and the new controller recognized the arrays immediately. This includes moving two different disk arrays from two different 9650s to two different 9750s, so whoever wrote that arrays are not compatible across different models is at least partly incorrect.
I do also have an LSI controller, which has been fine, but it's only one controller so it's not enough data points to draw any conclusions. I also have an md RAID array (on a very old 3ware controller which doesn't support RAID6), and it's also been fine. It hasn't suffered through any major catastrophes, though I do think it's had one or two fatal kernel panics, and once or twice had a hard reset done. It's still fine even with a small number of really crappy "green" drives still in the array (I learned that lesson the hard way--don't use green drives with a hardware RAID controller!).
--keith