Re: Inexpensive hardware SATA RAID suggestions?
On (30/07/05 12:13), jennyw wrote:
> Anyone care to recommend SATA RAID controllers?
>
> I'd like to setup a relatively inexpensive box with hardware RAID 1. The
> system will use Sarge. I was wondering if anyone had hardware suggestions.
>
> I found a SATA RAID FAQ at:
>
> http://linux.yyz.us/sata/sata-status.html
>
> Reading through the list, it looks the best supported hardware might be
> AHCI which looks like it's currently only used by Intel and ULi chipsets.
> However, it also seems that there some RAID hardware uses other drivers,
> such as 3Ware (of course, I'm not sure that 3Ware counts as inexpensive,
> plus I'm having trouble with a 3Ware card right now and am not yet sure
> whether it's a driver problem or a problem with the card).
>
> If anyone cares to share their experience with AHCI chipsets, that'd be
> great! If you have good experiences with some other hardware RAID I'd of
> course love to hear about it, too. Please keep in mind I want to keep the
> system cost as low as possible, so I'm not too interested in high-end stuff
> right now (although it might be interesting for future reference).
>
> Another question: Is it safe to assume that SATA RAID controllers support
> hot-swapping of drives?
Can't help directly with your question other than to ask why Hardware
Raid? There have been a number of posts recently on problems setting up
RAID on so called RAID controllers; if you search the archives, you'll
find some useful info on the shortcomings of 'cheap' Raid controllers;
generally they don't provide full RAID functionality.
FWIW, I've got software RAID1 on 6 servers (2 with SATA drives) and
they've all worked fine since setup using mdadm. I followed guidance
from the first 3 links below. Generally, IIRC, I disabled any so called
hardware RAID functionality in the BIOS or jump switches.
http://juerd.nl/site.plp/debianraid
http://rootraiddoc.alioth.debian.org/
http://unthought.net/Software-RAID.HOWTO/Software-RAID.HOWTO.html
http://xtronics.com/reference/SATA-RAID-Debian.htm
You don't need fancy new H/W for this ;)
Regards
Clive
--
www.clivemenzies.co.uk ...
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