Re: Using RAID chipsets in the motherboard.

From: Alvin Oga (aoga_at_ns.Linux-Consulting.com)
Date: 12/30/03

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    Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 10:49:10 -0800 (PST)
    To: Ramasubramanian Ramesh <rramesh@ti.com>
    
    

    hi ya ramesh

    On Tue, 30 Dec 2003, Ramasubramanian Ramesh wrote:

    > 1) All most all of the newer motherboards come with SATA RAID. Is this usable
    > as is without any additional kernel drivers. I ask this because I read in
    > many knowledge base resources that a HW controller looks just like an IDE
    > controller.

    dont bother ...

    sata by itself is a good brain twister to some ...

    onboard raid has never worked .. imho
            - never worked ----> allows for hands off booting of any disks
            in the array w/o any data loss or "fiddling time" loss

    > 2) What about additional on board RAID controllers? Like the VIA/PROMISE
    > Chipsets built into some of the ASUS mother boards?

    list of hardware raid controllers
            http://www.1U-Raid5.net/HW/hw.txt

    > Do they require
    > additional drivers or can I use them just like any other IDE controller?

    yes.. you need a driver for that hardware ...

    3ware (raid cards) has readily available and easily understandable raid
    drivers for their cards

    hw raid -- you're stuck with what they give you for driver support
       and monitoring

    sw raid .. do what you like to your hearts content ..

    > 3) My need for using these controllers is to have the ability to add extra disk
    > and I do not need their RAID features.

    neither hardware/software raid does not lend itslef too easily to "expand
    your raid" to larger capacity
            - you cannot merely add a disk

            - you have to have a resizable partition and resizable fs to "add
            a new disk" to add mroe capacity to your 100% full raid subsystem

    > But if RAID can be had without much
    > trouble I definitely would like to give it a try. The bottom line is I like to get beyond the

    raid is too much trouble for the benefits one gets

    - you want raid iff ..
            - you cannot afford for that data to go offline
            - you have the $$$ to have a 2nd raid backup system
            - you can sync data correctly from raid1 to raid2
            - you lose more $$$ in being offline than you would be manually
            rebuilding a new disk and restore from backups

            - you want to protect your system against one disk failure
            and you know what the mtbf is for your cpu, memory, fans, disks,
            and general user admin boo-boos and go offline anyway

    > 4 drive limit with the standard primary and secondary
    > controller on the Mobo with the use of these additional builtin controllers.

    you can have up to 12 (ide)disks in a raid subsystem
    and even mroe in scsi based raids
            - i dont know of anybody with more than 12 ide disks in their raid
            or willing to play with that much data in an untested manner
            - you'd be on the bleeding edge at more than 12 ide disks

    c ya
    alvin

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