I have a task to set this up, but don't have access to it until I finally I am needed to do it.
If anyone is familiar with this server, do you know if the motherboard based raid is software based (I can't find any real pointer at hp's site)? If so, I suppose it would be better to install CentOS and setup raid inside of Linux. Given that I have never used anything but hardware raid, what should I expect if the primary disc fails? I suppose it would only be a problem once it reboots and the motherboard bios sits and waits to boot the dead disc? Using a real raid hba isn't possible as the only two expansion slots will be full.
Thanks! jlc
Joseph L. Casale wrote:
I have a task to set this up, but don't have access to it until I finally I am needed to do it.
When you do have access, you should do a lspci to get a list of controllers in the machine.
If it were me, I would:
1. set up hardware RAID, do some speed tests 2. set up software RAID, do some speed tests
and compare the two.
I'm using:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/array-info
to get status into Big Brother on my old HP ML370 G3's with hardware RAID.
My machines have hardware RAID CCISS controllers and normal SCSI controllers. Connecting the disks to the normal SCSI controllers instead of the Smart Array controllers gives a factor 2-3 better performance in RAID 5.
However, maintaining software RAID is a bit more difficult, you'll have to do a lot of things manually when a disk is replaced: Remove the old partitions from the RAID arrays, spin up the new disk, partition it, add the new partitions to the arrays.
Another advantage of using hardware RAID is that a red light is blinking on the failing drive, reducing the risk of replacing the wrong drive which would be a disaster.
Mogens
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Joseph L. Casale -
Mogens Kjaer