Michael S. Peek wrote:
Hello gurus,
I have built a couple of large storage servers using 16-24 HDDs
connected to 3ware controllers, and so far it's worked pretty well. I
chose 3ware because it was supported by the linux kernel out of the
box. Although I'm not terribly satisfied with the managing software,
the RAIDs themselves have ticked over without a hitch for years.
But now I'm looking to build replacement servers and I thought I would
ask what the community uses for it's hardware RAID, and why?
Michael Peek
Michael,
Sorry I sent this to you instead of the list. Re-sending to the list:
Deps on what server you use. If you go with a tier1 supplier, their
server comes with hwraid. Having done support for a tier1 OEM, I found
many of our customers (running Linux) ignored the raid controllers and
used them as disk controllers and then used software raid. Mdadm will
not be obsoleted anytime soon, but your hardware controller might well
be gone in two years. I think that if I were to build a server, I would
not use hardware raid if I had a choice.
The reasons being are: 1. Portability, just take your HDs with you and
plug them in and it will not matter who makes the rest of the server.
2. no bios bugs or hardware updates to do 3. it is easy to follow, no
interface to learn and re-learn or new terms you have to learn. 4. no
clear cut benefits from hardware raid in MOST situations. 5. In three
years when the hardware is old and buggy, your mdadm will still be
working and you can just plug them in to the new server (assuming no
changes in HD tech). 6. I have seen dozens of catastrophic hardware
controller failures with complete data lost and not one mdadm failure.
I will be thrilled to listen to other viewpoints on the matter!
--
Damon L. Chesser
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