[CentOS] Internal RAID controllers question

Mon May 9 01:02:05 UTC 2016
Valeri Galtsev <galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu>

On Sun, May 8, 2016 7:31 pm, Digimer wrote:
> On 08/05/16 08:12 PM, John R Pierce wrote:
>> On 5/6/2016 2:26 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
>>> Which internal hardware RAID controllers will survive some future to
>>> come
>>> in your estimate. First of all my beloved 3ware finally seems to have
>>> passed away. After multiple acquisitions and becoming part of LSI and
>>> getting bought with LSI, it probably became non operational. Namely,
>>> the
>>> latest 3ware cards have ancient firmware. Neither of them supports 4kn
>>> drives. This speaks for itself for me. [Under new ownership] LSI,
>>> though
>>> still having new controllers released, and one of their MegaRAID
>>> controllers (at least) having support for 4kn drives, still may not
>>> last
>>> long (just my feeling, I'd like to hear yours). So, what RAID
>>> controllers
>>> will those of us who like to have hardware RAIDs use in some future to
>>> come?
>>
>>
>> IMHO, "Hardware" (really embedded firmware) RAID is for Windows servers,
>> since MS Windows has awful integrated software raid (aka 'dynamic disk',
>> truly a mess).   With Linux, I'd rather use LVM, with BSD, ZFS.
>
> "Hardware RAID" can very well include a controller with dedicated parity
> processing, battery/flash backed write caching and other tangible
> benefits.

Right, by "hardware RAID" as opposed to a bit more often used term
"software RAID" I did mean the card that has RAID processing done by the
chip on board of the card (parity or in other words modulus 2 sum in case
of RAID-5, and more sophisticated math in case of RAID-6 - I have heard of
at least two algorithms suitable for RAID-6). Thanks, Mr. Digimer, for
clarifying my somewhat vague in this place post.

Any insight, anybody, which hardware RAID cards of rather which
manufacturers of these cards will still make them in a future (say next 5
years)? Even if you just have feelings, without any thought why, I would
like to hear them. If you prefer to answer off the list, please, e-mail me
directly at galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu

Thanks a lot!

Valeri

>
> --
> Digimer
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++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247
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