On Wed, 2020-11-11 at 16:38 -0700, Warren Young wrote: > On Nov 11, 2020, at 2:01 PM, hw <hw at gc-24.de> wrote: > > I have yet to see software RAID that doesn't kill the performance. > > When was the last time you tried it? I'm currently using it, and the performance sucks. Perhaps it's not the software itself or the CPU but the on-board controllers or other components being incable handling multiple disks in a software raid. That's something I can't verify. > Why would you expect that a modern 8-core Intel CPU would impede I/O in any measureable way as compared to the outdated single-core 32-bit RISC CPU typically found on hardware RAID cards? These are the same CPUs, mind, that regularly crunch through TLS 1.3 on line-rate fiber Ethernet links, a much tougher task than mediating spinning disk I/O. It doesn't matter what I expect. > > And where > > do you get cost-efficient cards that can do JBOD? > > $69, 8 SATA/SAS ports: https://www.newegg.com/p/0ZK-08UH-0GWZ1 That says it's for HP. So will you still get firmware updates once the warranty is expired? Does it exclusively work with HP hardware? And are these good? > Search for “LSI JBOD” for tons more options. You may have to fiddle with the firmware to get it to stop trying to do clever RAID stuff, which lets you do smart RAID stuff like ZFS instead. > > > What has HP been thinking? > > That the hardware vs software RAID argument is over in 2020. > Do you have a reference for that, like a final statement from HP? Did they stop developing RAID controllers, or do they ship their servers now without them and tell customers to use btrfs or mdraid?