RAID: Hardware or software (with LVM in use)

From: Andrew Gideon (c172driver1_at_gideon.org)
Date: 11/28/05 

Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 15:51:43 -0500

I'm putting together a system with eight drives. I'm considering RAID5.

The last time I tried RAID5 in software was an early Redhat Enterprise 3
version. It was *slow*, not the least of the problem being constant errors
to syslog about a block size mismatch. I searched around a bit at the
time, and found that this was an issue because I was also using the volume
manager.

I've no plans to give up using LVM; it's just too convenient.

So I'm wondering if Fedora Core (3? 4?) has fixed this problem, or if the
problem is fixed in later Redhat Enterprise versions.

An alternative is to go with hardware RAID. But I've grown very untrusting
of this in the ATA market (and these are SATA1 drives). I don't think I've
ever had success with a RAID card on ATA (whereas I've never had a problem
with SCSI hardware RAID).

I did a little Deja-Googling, and didn't find too much that was helpful.
I'd like to find something that works "out of the box". That is, a driver
that's included in Fedora or Redhat. Otherwise, it'll get a little
annoying as I'll have to move drives between motherboard and RAID card to
get things started, install the driver, etc.

Cards I've seen are Promise FastTrak SX8300, Adaptec 2810SA, Highpoint
RocketRaid 1820, etc. Any suggests to use or avoid? Alternatives?

Or has the software RAID5/LVM issue been resolved?

Thanks for any suggestions...

        Andrew

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Disk Mangement Advice
    ... Your reply was to my post which clearly indicated software RAID. ... > Todd clearly indicated in his post to use Hardware RAID, which I agree, ... If you are using software RAID, you can't boot from RAID5 so there I would ... suggest using a mirrored RAID1 for the system and the remaining four drives ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.setup)
  • Re: Disk Mangement Advice
    ... Your reply was to my post which clearly indicated software RAID. ... > Todd clearly indicated in his post to use Hardware RAID, which I agree, ... If you are using software RAID, you can't boot from RAID5 so there I would ... suggest using a mirrored RAID1 for the system and the remaining four drives ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.networking)
  • Re: Disk Mangement Advice
    ... Your reply was to my post which clearly indicated software RAID. ... > Todd clearly indicated in his post to use Hardware RAID, which I agree, ... If you are using software RAID, you can't boot from RAID5 so there I would ... suggest using a mirrored RAID1 for the system and the remaining four drives ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.general)
  • Re: Re[2]: ZFS in productions 64 bit
    ... should not use more than 8 or 9 drives in a raidz vdev. ... storage concept is just so much nicer/easier to work with than hardware RAID ... Just add another raidz vdev to the pool. ...
    (freebsd-isp)
  • Re: ZFS in productions 64 bit
    ... should not use more than 8 or 9 drives in a raidz vdev. ... storage concept is just so much nicer/easier to work with than hardware RAID ... Just add another raidz vdev to the pool. ...
    (freebsd-isp)