[CentOS] Entry server hardware

Sun Feb 12 17:31:52 UTC 2006
Chris Mauritz <chrism at imntv.com>

Isreal Varela wrote:
> Benjamin Smith wrote:
>> On Thursday 09 February 2006 19:46, Matt Hyclak wrote:
>>  
>>>> I would like some advice on a SATA RAID controller that is able to 
>>>> work in a 32 bit/33mhz PCI slot. I have been looking for a while 
>>>> but all I can find is 64 bit cards that cost over $300. I just need 
>>>> it to mirror 2 drives, and of course work in Centos 4.2.  I am not 
>>>> looking for RAID 5 or anything like that. All the cards I find that 
>>>> would do this are fakeraid.
>>>>       
>>
>> Any particular reason why you're not using Linux Software RAID? 
>> Having had to swap RAID arrays in a hurry to alien hardware, using 
>> standard IDE and software RAID was a lifesaver for me!
>> -Ben
>>   
> I always thought hardware RAID was the way to go, Seems cleaner to me. 
> Just used to doing it that way in the Microsoft world I guess.

I have used software RAID in production on and off since 1998-ish using 
RAID 0/1/5/10.  To date, I've never had one fail "ungracefully" and 
haven't had any performance issues to speak of.  However, for the past 5 
years or so, I've used mostly hardware RAID with an emphasis on 3Ware 
IDE cards.  They just plain work and it is a lot easier if you don't 
have the time/energy to keep up with the latest comings and goings in 
the software RAID corner of the Linux world.  They are also not THAT 
expensive.

Lately, I've gotten to like the Highpoint RocketRAID 2224 and 2240 PCI-X 
cards since they have multi-lane connectors and support SATA II.  The 
multilane connectors have made it easy for me to deploy external tanks 
of SATA II 500gig Seagate drives for video editing applications.  The 
2224 also has the benefit of being OSX friendly if you've got the need 
to support that in addition to Linux and Winders.

If one of the lower end 3Ware cards is too expensive for your 
application, I wouldn't worry too much about deploying software RAID.  
It works and it's pretty painless to set up with the CentOS installer. 
Just make sure you budget a bit of your cpu power to deal with the 
overhead and that you test updates before you roll them out to a server 
that's doing real work (Tm).

Cheers,