[CentOS] Filesystem for Maildir

[Christopher Chan]

>> that last sentence should have been 'cannot beat'
> 
> I can believe it. Linux SW RAID is _VERY_ fast. The advantage of 3ware 
> HW RAID is in its convienence and robustness when Bad Things (tm) 
> happen, not its performance, in my experience.

I have used both 3ware, linux software raid and others.

If you are comparing linux software raid versus 3ware 75xx or 85xx for 
raid5, yes, linux software raid beats 3ware hands down. For raid0 or 
raid1, 3ware is on par if not better than linux software raid (okay, 
this was about 2-3 years ago, maybe the mirroring code on linux software 
raid has been improved) given that both relied on disk speed.

However, since the 95xx series, 3ware now comes with RAM caches which 
are orders of magnitude faster than disk speed. It is impossible to 
compare RAM vs disk and so even raid5 on 3ware 95xx or above with a RAM 
cache is going to beat linux software raid.

Man, I wish I had a spare box to run fsbench and do a centos 4 vs 5 
comparison.