[CentOS] Promise FastTrak series

[Steven Moix - Axianet.ch]

Hum, if I decide to use software RAID (the dark and easy way) I can use my 
standard onboard IDE controller instead of the Promise card...Actually I 
wonder what the difference is between a full-software solutiuon like the one 
provided by the linux kernel and a semi-hardware solution like the 
Promise...

As far as I know the only benefit of a semi-hardware solution is to "share" 
the workload between the CPU and a RAID chip but you need a nasty driver to 
do that...


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "William Warren" <hescominsoon at emmanuelcomputerconsulting.com>
To: "CentOS mailing list" <centos at centos.org>
Sent: Saturday, May 21, 2005 3:16 PM
Subject: Re: [CentOS] Promise FastTrak series


> Well promise RAID is software raid as well.  Using the included 2.6xx raid 
> functionality will at least not hurt your performance anymore than using 
> the Promise software raid drivers.  Depending on the nature of Promise's 
> drivers(which i have heard mainly negative things) you will get better 
> performance using the built in RAID from Linux.
>
> Steven Moix - Axianet.ch wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> In some weeks I'm going to reinstall some old RedHat9 based servers with 
>> Promise FastTrak TX2000 "semi-hardware" RAID1 controllers. I just tried 
>> to install CentOS 4.0 on a computer with a spare card and as usual both 
>> HDD attached to the RAID1 controller are seen separately by the installer 
>> because the specific driver for the TX2000 wasn't loaded. Nothing new 
>> here, it was always like this on every distro as far as I know.
>>
>> Now I googeled a bit and have some questions:
>>
>> 1. In some forums I could read that the FastTrak series in RAID mode 
>> wasn't supported anymore in the 2.6 kernel (was PDCRAID module in the 
>> later 2.4 kernels).
>> Quoted apparently from the linux kernel mailing list:
>>
>>>> In 2.6, Promise software RAID support does not exist. In conversations 
>>>> with Promise, we all agreed to encourage and support the standard Linux 
>>>> RAID, md.
>>
>> So does this mean that I have to use software RAID in linux if I don't 
>> want to load the drivers provided by Promise (see question 2)?
>>
>> 2. On the other hand Promise provides the partial source code for their 
>> driver, but there is a silly problem with this...I want to install my OS 
>> directly on the RAID array :)
>> So I guess that I would have to:
>> - Install CentOS on another computer, compile the driver provided by 
>> Promise, make a driver disk (don't ask me how).
>> - Boot CentOS on the server with the controller and type "linux dd" to 
>> load this driver disk.
>> - Pray and correct bugs for the next 2 weeks.
>> Is this the right way to go?
>>
>> Any feedback with FastTrak TX2000 or TX4000 controllers would be very 
>> welcome, let me know which solution you choosed.
>>
>> Thanks
>> Steven
>>
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>
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