[CentOS-virt] Slightly OT: FakeRaid or Software Raid

Wed Dec 2 20:59:46 UTC 2009
Christopher G. Stach II <cgs at ldsys.net>

----- "Ben M." <centos at rivint.com> wrote:

> I have had great luck with nvidia fakeraid on RAID1, but I see there
> are 
> preferences for software raid. I have very little hands on with full 
> Linux software RAID and that was about 14 years ago.

MD RAID. I'd even opt for MD RAID over a lot of hardware implementations. This writeup summarizes a bit of why:

http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/008696.html

Hardware RAID's performance is obviously going to be better, but it's only worth it if you *need* it (more than ~8 disks, parity). If you're just doing RAID 0, 1, or 10 in a single box and you're not pushing it to its limits as a DB server or benchmarking and going over it with a magnifying glass, you probably won't notice a difference in performance.

I'll take fewer moving parts and portability.

As someone already said, dmraid is done in software, too. "Fakeraid" is basically the same as MD RAID, but with an extra piece of hardware and extra logic bits to fail.

-- 
Christopher G. Stach II