[CentOS] software raid

Thu Mar 29 17:42:44 UTC 2007
Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com>

chrism at imntv.com wrote:
> 
> An 8-port 9550SX card is only US$500.  Why on earth would I mess around 
> with software RAID when that card is going to make things a plug and 
> play proposition?  It just isn't worth the hassle.

What hassle?  You have to define the layout somewhere.  Using disk druid 
during the install or an mdadm command later isn't any more hassle than 
any other way you might do it.

>> Not when you need that fileserver to serve. I'd go with JFS. XFS is 
>> too risky even if the code was not iffy. ext3 + 3ware RAID5 arrays is 
>> that bad. IIRC XFS was somewhere like 4-5 times faster than ext3 and 
>> no, i am not talking about 3ware 75xx/85xx boards. I am talking 3ware 
>> 95xx boards with onboard RAM.
>> _______________________________________________ 
> 
> If you need to serve files in an enterprise situation and you *cannot* 
> afford a $500 RAID card, then I think you've got more pressing issues.  :)

But what's the point?  Unless you are running raid 5, which is pretty 
pointless itself with cheap disk space, the controller isn't really 
doing any work for you.  For sizes where it is practical I happen to 
like software RAID1 which will let you recover data from any single 
drive on a machine with any controller that can access it.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com