[CentOS] Recommendations for a "real RAID" 1 card on Centos box

[Therese Trudeau]

>> Ah I figured someone would ask that.  I use pretty much all 
>> major adobe products, Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, just
>> about the entire suite.  
>> 
>> I have two home workstation machines. One is Centos, and one 
>> is Windows (the one I use Adobe on). I'd prefer if possible
>> to have the same type of RAID cards on both machines, because 
>> easier to manage and if I ever decide to sell or give away one
>> machine, I can pull the raid card and use it as a backup.
> 
> If you are a graphic designer, I'm curious what you use the
> CentOS box for (or why you use Windows and not Mac :-)

Good question when I started out I had windows so that's
what I bought - Adobe windows versions.  I'm considering
migrating to Mac though because Adobe just started a 
new program where one can
migrate to mac versions without paying full price for a new
version - they used to charge full price for upgrades if one wanted to
switch from Windows to mac. Now they just cancel out
the windows version if one migrates to Mac.
> 
>> From experience I have learned that Photoshop will not install
>> on software raid on my W2K machine - I tried it two years ago,
>> could not get it to install, and after a few days trying to get
>> it to work, called Adobe tech support and at that time the tech
>> support person told me that their products don't run on software
>> raid because they don't want people having multiple copies of one
>> license on a second drive (unless it's for their second copy
>> allowance for a laptop or second machine owned by same person,
>> and only one or the other - the laptop or second desktop are 
>> run at the same time - my second copy is on a laptop ).
> 
> The Photoshop support tech was just shrugging you off here
> because he didn't want to support you. There exists no such
> stipulation in Adobe's EULA. As long as it is running on
> the machine it was licensed for and that machine's OS is
> supported then you are good. Running on RAID has nothing
> to do with second copies and second machine allowance as
> the storage medium is not the key in licensing, the
> processor(s) are. Adobe needn't even be installed on the
> local HD if you can get away with a network install and
> all that registry crap, but it better have a license for
> the CPU it's running on.
> 
Just spoke with Adobe sales today checking into upgrade pricing.
The sales guy said that the latest
versions of all Adobe products would not install on software RAID
systems, BUT he did say, if I bought a hardware raid system,
then I would have no problem installing it because the OS and
Adobe products do not see hardware raid.  It may state in their EULA that there is no 
restriction running either software or hardware raid, but I have to
go by what the sales department tells me.   It's rediculous I know.

> I had run Adobe Photoshop on Windows 2000 Terminal Server
> running under software RAID with no problems (besides poor
> visual performance due to terminal services).

That's great wish I could have gotten my apps to install a few years ago -
at the time I tried doing it with the Adaptec 2120SA raid card which uses
software raid drivers.  It's a far cry from the 3ware true raid, yet I don't
want to take the chance, set up true software raid, load my adobe products on disk
and them find two or three years from now if I upgrade with a new version, 
that adobe has found a way to disable software raid compatability for all scenairos.

Just curious, what version of photoshop were you using under your
software raid setup?  I tried it with Creative Suite 2 which includes photoshop. 
 
>> Also I may at some time migrate my adobe products to the
>> Linux machine and run Adobe on WINE on the Linux box.  Google
>> just started working with the folks over @ WINE, and they want
>> to make it so all adobe products run flawlessly on Linux - 
>> WINE, not just photoshop and illustrator.  Today some adobe
>> products run on wine well, some don't, in a few years they all
>> will run well on a linux box using WINE.  I'm not sure about
>> running adobe using software raid on a linux box and WINE -
>> never tried it, but going with hareware raid on the linux
>> box eliminates another possible unknown.
> 
> Don't bother. If you are a serious Adobe designer get
> yourself a Mac and dual boot it between OS X and CentOS or
> triple with Windows.

Yes I think I will migrate over to mac instead of running adobe on wine,
when I get the upgrade, makes much more sense.  And set up a hardware RAID 1
on the new desktop mac.
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