Re: looking for a transparent hardware RAID controller for debian

From: Ron Johnson (ron.l.johnson_at_cox.net)
Date: 11/10/05

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    To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 00:00:50 -0600

    On Wed, 2005-11-09 at 11:56 -0800, David Kirchner wrote:
    > On 11/9/05, enediel gonzalez <enediel@hotmail.com> wrote:
    > > Hello
    > >
    > > I'm looking for a transparent hardware RAID controller to implement a RAID1
    > > for the debian,
    > > ?Is it possible to find a RAID controller on the market (no matter for IDE,
    > > SATA, SCSI hard drives) that at the moment of the debian installation, it
    > > will see one hard drive on the box
    > > ?
    > >
    > > We tested a few motherboards with RAID controller included, etc, etc, etc,
    > > but until today we don't have the right answer for this question.
    > >
    > > I'll appreciate if somebody give me the controller model that finally we
    > > help us solve this question.
    > >
    > > Thanks in advance for any help
    > >
    > > Best regards
    > > Enediel
    >
    > The 3ware 8xxx and 9xxx IDE/SATA series cards work very well in our
    > experience -- better than any SCSI RAID card I've ever used (although
    > admittedly I haven't spent thousands on a single card yet). The 9xxx
    > is supported when you install Sarge with the 2.6 kernel, out of the
    > box.

    Last week on the list someone mentioned possible problems with
    the 3ware 9xxx cards and newer kernels. Maybe it's been resolved,
    maybe not. 

    -- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson, LA USA
PGP Key ID 8834C06B I prefer encrypted mail.
"The middle of the road is for yellow lines and dead armadillos."
Jim Hightower, Texas Agriculture Commissioner

    attached mail follows:

    Date: Sat, 5 Nov 2005 11:34:43 +0000
To: debian user <debian-user@lists.debian.org>

    On 5 Nov 2005, at 3:25, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:

    > On Fri, 04 Nov 2005, Chris Boot wrote:
    >> 1. Take 5/6 SATA disks for RAID 5/6/10
    >> 2. Allow them to be hot-plugged (with or without Jeff Garzik's
    >> in-progress SATA hotplug patches)
    >> 3. Do the work in hardware
    >
    > Then you certainly won't need any patch, as the hotplugging will be
    > done by
    > the SATA RAID controller :-)

    That's what I thought, but you never know. :-)

    > I'd suggest one that handles saf-te enclosures, and a saf-te enclosure
    > (hotswap bay) to go with it.

    That certainly would be the way to go. Can anyone recommend hardware
    vendors that will sell hotplug SATA servers that can take quite a few
    (6) drives? I've looked at Dell but they seem very attached to SCSI,
    and HP's site just confuses me. Any others?

    >> All I've done previously is software RAID 10 which I'm happy with,
    >> but
    >> I'm now building a high-performance database / file server and don't
    >> want the machine spending time calculating parity and so on.
    >
    > AFAIK RAID10 requires any parity calculation. What the hardware
    > controller
    > will give you is easier hotplugging, better SAF-TE support, and
    > more SATA
    > ports. If it is not a good RAID controller, you could easily
    > actually lose
    > performance in every RAID level.
    >
    > For RAID 5 and RAID 6, AFAIK if you want good performance you need
    > a damn
    > good RAID controller, the type that have IOP321 or IOP331
    > processors at the
    > very least, and a lot of onboard battery-backed SDRAM in it.

    Well, so far the options seem to be:

    * 3Ware Escalade 9xxx
    I've heard bad things about these on LKML, mostly to do with broken /
    slow firmware with recent kernels. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

    * Adaptec 2810SA and family
    These have an Intel 80303 and 64MB SDRAM with battery backup.

    * Intel SRCS28X
    These have the mentioned IOP331 and 128MB of SDRAM with battery
    backup. Sounds nice, and cheaper than the Adaptec cards.

    Does anyone have any experience with these in particular they might
    like to share?

    Many thanks,
    Chris 

    -- 
Chris Boot
bootc@bootc.net
http://www.bootc.net/



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