[CentOS] Entry server hardware

Sun Feb 12 15:11:36 UTC 2006
Craig White <craigwhite at azapple.com>

On Sun, 2006-02-12 at 01:12 -0600, 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.
-----
Traditionally a hardware RAID consisted of SCSI drives on systems with
slower bus speeds and you could actually improve performance but you are
talking about low end, SATA stuff on machines with higher bus speeds and
you really aren't getting improved performance and to get a true
hardware RAID SATA controller probably will push you out of the 'entry
server hardware' category. Recognize that the lower end SATA RAID
controllers aren't truly hardware RAID but are software RAID (Brian
calls them fake RAID or fRAID) and for simplicity it's typically better
to just use software RAID.

Craig