I need a SATA RAID PCI card that works well with CentOS and is fully supported. Mandatory features: - works with the drivers already in the kernel, no additional drivers - can do RAID 0, 1 and 5 - hotswap - allows to monitor the status of the array and of each individual drive via a script (ideally run from cron) - works with very large SATA drives
Nice to have features but not mandatory: - small battery to keep the array alive until the write buffers are flushed after a power loss
Anyone having positive experience with SATA RAID, please comment.
On Tue, 20 Mar 2007 at 10:52am, Florin Andrei wrote
I need a SATA RAID PCI card that works well with CentOS and is fully supported. Mandatory features:
- works with the drivers already in the kernel, no additional drivers
- can do RAID 0, 1 and 5
- hotswap
- allows to monitor the status of the array and of each individual drive via
a script (ideally run from cron)
- works with very large SATA drives
Nice to have features but not mandatory:
- small battery to keep the array alive until the write buffers are flushed
after a power loss
Anyone having positive experience with SATA RAID, please comment.
3ware. Period. 9550/9590 will do everything you want. 9650 gets you RAID6, but I'm not sure the distro provided drivers have caught up yet.
Oh... right.. I think we did have to add the drivers seperately for the 9650. 95xx should be "out of the box".
Andrew
-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org]On Behalf Of Joshua Baker-LePain Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2007 1:57 PM To: CentOS mailing list Subject: Re: [CentOS] SATA RAID card recommendation?
On Tue, 20 Mar 2007 at 10:52am, Florin Andrei wrote
I need a SATA RAID PCI card that works well with CentOS and is fully supported. Mandatory features:
- works with the drivers already in the kernel, no additional drivers
- can do RAID 0, 1 and 5
- hotswap
- allows to monitor the status of the array and of each
individual drive via
a script (ideally run from cron)
- works with very large SATA drives
Nice to have features but not mandatory:
- small battery to keep the array alive until the write buffers
are flushed
after a power loss
Anyone having positive experience with SATA RAID, please comment.
3ware. Period. 9550/9590 will do everything you want. 9650 gets you RAID6, but I'm not sure the distro provided drivers have caught up yet.
-- Joshua Baker-LePain Department of Biomedical Engineering Duke University _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Andrew Cotter wrote:
Oh... right.. I think we did have to add the drivers seperately for the 9650.
How big of a hassle was that? Any issues with the AMD64 arch?
Is it easy to install the OS on a system with the root drive on the 9650?
I think we went the route of using precompiled rpm's. Possibly from pbone.net but off the top of my head I can't remember. May have been from source directly from the 3wre site too. We are using it on an AMD64 proc. OS is not running on the array, we have a separate drive for that.
Andrew
-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org]On Behalf Of Florin Andrei Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2007 2:29 PM To: CentOS mailing list Subject: Re: [CentOS] SATA RAID card recommendation?
Andrew Cotter wrote:
Oh... right.. I think we did have to add the drivers seperately for the 9650.
How big of a hassle was that? Any issues with the AMD64 arch?
Is it easy to install the OS on a system with the root drive on the 9650?
-- Florin Andrei
http://florin.myip.org/ _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Joshua Baker-LePain spake the following on 3/20/2007 10:56 AM:
On Tue, 20 Mar 2007 at 10:52am, Florin Andrei wrote
I need a SATA RAID PCI card that works well with CentOS and is fully supported. Mandatory features:
- works with the drivers already in the kernel, no additional drivers
- can do RAID 0, 1 and 5
- hotswap
- allows to monitor the status of the array and of each individual
drive via a script (ideally run from cron)
- works with very large SATA drives
Nice to have features but not mandatory:
- small battery to keep the array alive until the write buffers are
flushed after a power loss
Anyone having positive experience with SATA RAID, please comment.
3ware. Period. 9550/9590 will do everything you want. 9650 gets you RAID6, but I'm not sure the distro provided drivers have caught up yet.
9500 is the PCI card 9550/9590 is PCI-x. 9500 works out of the box in CentOS 4 as I have used it there. For hotswap, you need a drivecage that also supports hotswap. The 3ware cage does, and comes with all cabling to get drive lights working. They hold 4 drives in 3 drives/half height 5 1/4 space.
On Tue, 20 Mar 2007 at 11:37am, Scott Silva wrote
Joshua Baker-LePain spake the following on 3/20/2007 10:56 AM:
3ware. Period. 9550/9590 will do everything you want. 9650 gets you RAID6, but I'm not sure the distro provided drivers have caught up yet.
9500 is the PCI card 9550/9590 is PCI-x. 9500 works out of the box in CentOS 4
Not exactly. 9550 is PCI-x, 9590 is PCIe.
Joshua Baker-LePain wrote:
Not exactly. 9550 is PCI-x, 9590 is PCIe.
But in theory, if it's 95xx it should be supported out of the box by CentOS 4.4, regardless of the bus architecture, right?
On Tue, 20 Mar 2007 at 11:46am, Florin Andrei wrote
Joshua Baker-LePain wrote:
Not exactly. 9550 is PCI-x, 9590 is PCIe.
But in theory, if it's 95xx it should be supported out of the box by CentOS 4.4, regardless of the bus architecture, right?
Yes.
9500 is the PCI card 9550/9590 is PCI-x. 9500 works out of the box in CentOS 4 as I have used it there. For hotswap, you need a drivecage that also supports hotswap. The 3ware cage does, and comes with all cabling to get drive lights working. They hold 4 drives in 3 drives/half height 5 1/4 space.
I have a spare 9500S-12 that I could part with if someone needs it. Decided on the 9650-12ML soon after we bought the 9500.
Andrew
We just built a 6+ TB array using 10x750GB drives using a 3ware 9650SE-12ML on CentOS4.
The 3ware cards are top notch and I am guessing you will be hearing that a lot from others on this list. Many of their models do have the ability to add a battery for the cache.
3ware has a tool to monitor the card called 3dm2. Nice web based tool that allows you to configure the card and see the status of the devices.
What are you trying to build?
Andrew
-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org]On Behalf Of Florin Andrei Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2007 1:52 PM To: CentOS mailing list Subject: [CentOS] SATA RAID card recommendation?
I need a SATA RAID PCI card that works well with CentOS and is fully supported. Mandatory features:
- works with the drivers already in the kernel, no additional drivers
- can do RAID 0, 1 and 5
- hotswap
- allows to monitor the status of the array and of each individual drive
via a script (ideally run from cron)
- works with very large SATA drives
Nice to have features but not mandatory:
- small battery to keep the array alive until the write buffers are
flushed after a power loss
Anyone having positive experience with SATA RAID, please comment.
-- Florin Andrei
http://florin.myip.org/ _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Andrew Cotter wrote:
What are you trying to build?
Analysis and reporting tool with a large MySQL backend. It also serves as a transient backup server for that data. I need MySQL to _fly_ on that RAID array, since the data set is pretty big. I wrote pretty much all software and did the DB schema, so I have true full control over what's running on that machine.
I think I can go with the "throw more hardware (bigger disks) at the problem" approach and use RAID1 instead of RAID5. That should give a boost to the read performance, in theory. I need to do some tests and figure out what works best in this particular case.
I was wrong with the requirements, it's not PCI, it's PCI Express x16
There's not much room in the system, it's a 1U. I think I can fit a full-height card in it, but it must not be too bulky.
It's a fairly new AMD 64bit machine. It will run CentOS 4.4 64bit, possibly version 5 if the project drags its feet long enough and 5 is released soon, and MySQL makes "official" packages for CentOS 5 soon enough and is stable enough. Hm, that's a lot of ifs. :-/
Florin Andrei spake the following on 3/20/2007 11:20 AM:
Andrew Cotter wrote:
What are you trying to build?
Analysis and reporting tool with a large MySQL backend. It also serves as a transient backup server for that data. I need MySQL to _fly_ on that RAID array, since the data set is pretty big. I wrote pretty much all software and did the DB schema, so I have true full control over what's running on that machine.
I think I can go with the "throw more hardware (bigger disks) at the problem" approach and use RAID1 instead of RAID5. That should give a boost to the read performance, in theory. I need to do some tests and figure out what works best in this particular case.
I was wrong with the requirements, it's not PCI, it's PCI Express x16
There's not much room in the system, it's a 1U. I think I can fit a full-height card in it, but it must not be too bulky.
It's a fairly new AMD 64bit machine. It will run CentOS 4.4 64bit, possibly version 5 if the project drags its feet long enough and 5 is released soon, and MySQL makes "official" packages for CentOS 5 soon enough and is stable enough. Hm, that's a lot of ifs. :-/
3ware 9650Se is a half height card up to 8 drives, is BBU capable, and you could have raid 10 if you want some speed and reliability.
On Tue, 20 Mar 2007 at 11:20am, Florin Andrei wrote
Analysis and reporting tool with a large MySQL backend. It also serves as a transient backup server for that data. I need MySQL to _fly_ on that RAID array, since the data set is pretty big. I wrote pretty much all software and did the DB schema, so I have true full control over what's running on that machine.
I think I can go with the "throw more hardware (bigger disks) at the problem" approach and use RAID1 instead of RAID5. That should give a boost to the read performance, in theory. I need to do some tests and figure out what works best in this particular case.
IMO, you do *not* want RAID5 there. RAID10 is likely to work best.
I was wrong with the requirements, it's not PCI, it's PCI Express x16
For 3ware, then, that's 9590 or 9650.
There's not much room in the system, it's a 1U. I think I can fit a full-height card in it, but it must not be too bulky.
Erm, how many spindles can you fit in that 1U? 4 is the most I've seen.
Joshua Baker-LePain wrote:
Erm, how many spindles can you fit in that 1U? 4 is the most I've seen.
Yup, 4 disks. 2 for OS, 2 for DB. RAID1
Florin Andrei spake the following on 3/20/2007 11:50 AM:
Joshua Baker-LePain wrote:
Erm, how many spindles can you fit in that 1U? 4 is the most I've seen.
Yup, 4 disks. 2 for OS, 2 for DB. RAID1
If you need more space for the DB, you could do raid 10 with the 4 drives, and partition a bit off the front for the OS install.
Florin Andrei wrote:
Joshua Baker-LePain wrote:
Erm, how many spindles can you fit in that 1U? 4 is the most I've seen.
Yup, 4 disks. 2 for OS, 2 for DB. RAID1
Well then may I suggest using the motherboard provided disk connectors and then getting yourself a BBU NVRAM or DDR RAM board to use as an external journal?
What kind of box is this? The motherboard may already come with a BBU write cache for all we know.
Some of these might be worth looking at:
http://www.pc-pitstop.com/sata_raid_controllers/
JC
On 3/21/07, Feizhou feizhou@graffiti.net wrote:
Florin Andrei wrote:
Joshua Baker-LePain wrote:
Erm, how many spindles can you fit in that 1U? 4 is the most I've
seen.
Yup, 4 disks. 2 for OS, 2 for DB. RAID1
Well then may I suggest using the motherboard provided disk connectors and then getting yourself a BBU NVRAM or DDR RAM board to use as an external journal?
What kind of box is this? The motherboard may already come with a BBU write cache for all we know. _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Justin Cataldo wrote:
Some of these might be worth looking at:
Only the Areca line of boards have onboard memory to use as a write cache and most of those featured are overkill for a 1U box.
If you are going to go for an Areca, you might as well get the 3ware since 3ware drivers are already in the kernel whereas Areca is still working on theirs.
http://www.pc-pitstop.com/sata_raid_controllers/
JC
On 3/21/07, Feizhou feizhou@graffiti.net wrote:
Florin Andrei wrote:
Joshua Baker-LePain wrote:
Erm, how many spindles can you fit in that 1U? 4 is the most I've
seen.
Yup, 4 disks. 2 for OS, 2 for DB. RAID1
Well then may I suggest using the motherboard provided disk connectors and then getting yourself a BBU NVRAM or DDR RAM board to use as an external journal?
What kind of box is this? The motherboard may already come with a BBU write cache for all we know. _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Feizhou wrote:
Florin Andrei wrote:
Yup, 4 disks. 2 for OS, 2 for DB. RAID1
Well then may I suggest using the motherboard provided disk connectors and then getting yourself a BBU NVRAM or DDR RAM board to use as an external journal?
What kind of box is this? The motherboard may already come with a BBU write cache for all we know.
The mobo cannot do hardware RAID. (*)
(*) - No hard- vs soft-RAID holy wars please. I use both.
Joshua Baker-LePain wrote:
On Tue, 20 Mar 2007 at 11:20am, Florin Andrei wrote
I think I can go with the "throw more hardware (bigger disks) at the problem" approach and use RAID1 instead of RAID5. That should give a boost to the read performance, in theory. I need to do some tests and figure out what works best in this particular case.
IMO, you do *not* want RAID5 there. RAID10 is likely to work best.
With todays larger drives, and the amount of time raid5 rebuilds can take leaving you exposed to double failure, and the price of drives, I'm not sure there's _ANY_ application anymore for which raid5 is appropriate. And absolutely for sure, anything involving SQL databases should be raid1/10...
There's not much room in the system, it's a 1U. I think I can fit a full-height card in it, but it must not be too bulky.
the cache battery backup option might be tough to squeeze into a 1U.
I'm another satisfied 3ware user. I'm up to about 25 systems with cards in them.
tw_cli is very scriptable for monitoring (see my post from yesterday :))
On 3/20/07, Florin Andrei florin@andrei.myip.org wrote:
I need a SATA RAID PCI card that works well with CentOS and is fully supported. Mandatory features:
- works with the drivers already in the kernel, no additional drivers
- can do RAID 0, 1 and 5
- hotswap
- allows to monitor the status of the array and of each individual drive
via a script (ideally run from cron)
- works with very large SATA drives
Nice to have features but not mandatory:
- small battery to keep the array alive until the write buffers are
flushed after a power loss
Anyone having positive experience with SATA RAID, please comment.
-- Florin Andrei
http://florin.myip.org/ _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
On Tue, Mar 20, 2007 at 10:52:12AM -0700, Florin Andrei wrote:
Anyone having positive experience with SATA RAID, please comment.
3ware. 'nough said.
- -- Rodrigo Barbosa "Quid quid Latine dictum sit, altum viditur" "Be excellent to each other ..." - Bill & Ted (Wyld Stallyns)
-
Andrew Cotter -
Feizhou -
Florin Andrei -
Gary Richardson -
John R Pierce -
Joshua Baker-LePain -
Justin Cataldo -
Rodrigo Barbosa -
Scott Silva