Re: Hardware IDE RAID-1 controller recommandation
On Wed, Dec 04, 2002 at 11:25:55AM +0000, Michelle Konzack wrote:
> >
> >On Mon, Dec 02, 2002 at 02:22:43AM +0000, Michelle Konzack wrote:
>
> >RAID-1 is mirroring. You plan 4- or 8-way mirroring ??
>
> what do you mean with '4- or 8-way' ?
>
You said in your first post that you "need Hardware
RAID-1 Controllers for two, four and eight Harddisks."
And I was wondering why you would need more than 2 hard disks for
mirroring.
It can be either :
- n-way mirroring : you want to have n identical drives, thus you can
live with up to (n-1) failed drives.
- some kind of RAID "10", as Russel pointed out, where you would do in
fact RAID 1 over multiple RAID 0 arrays.
> I have always two disks parallel (one original and one mirror)
>
OK, it's clearer now.
> Had problems with Software RAID, because the mirror is not
> bootable and after a shutdown thy Server was not starting.
>
> I think, I can use only Hardware RAID.
>
Obvisously better.
> >3ware. Definetly. Although I'm not sure that it supports RAID-1 arrays
>
> I have not found a reseller for 3ware in my region...
>
3ware website lists at least 4 dealers in Germany...
> >> Is there a RAID-1 Controller which support PIO Mode 4 Drives ?
> >>
> >
> >Why on earth would you like to do PIO ? It's awfully slow and
> >ineffective, compared to DMA...
>
> Why use 30 Gigs if a 1 Gig does it...
>
Because 30 Gb drives are cheaper and faster than 1 Gb ones...
> It is only one of my administration Servers and the installation
> is around 95 MByte... ;-))
>
If what you require is only a small drive, and you don't have too much
I/O on it (basically serving webpages is OK, SQL is not), did you
consider using CF cards ?
You can get 256 Mb or more for about 100 Euros. Once you get a cheap
CF-to-IDE adapter (something like 20 Euros), you plug them as IDE
drives. Very reliable (almost no need for mirroring), almost zero
power consumption, no noise, no heat.
We use them in several "appliance like" servers at our customers.
The only drawbacks are :
- capacity (but as you said, for lots of tasks, that's not a problem)
- PIO only. Thus quite slow, about 1 MByte/sec.
HTH,
--
Nicolas Bougues
Axialys Interactive
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