At 12:31 PM -0400 2000/4/29, Brandon D. Valentine wrote:
> I can definitely appreciate that. The RAID solution of choice for
> FreeBSD appears to be SCSI-SCSI RAID adapters as utilized on
> wcarchive.cdrom.com and ftp.freesoftware.org -- the two busiest ftp
> archives around and consequently the two busiest disk subsystems around.
The testing I've done so far confirms what Greg Lehey and
everyone else has been telling me all this time -- dedicated RAID
controllers just really can't keep up with a good software solution
(such as vinum, or even ccd) and modern hardware. It takes a lot
longer to develop all the custom hardware to put into a RAID
controller, and main CPU speeds have been increasing so fast, that
it's quicker and easier to do it all in software these days.
Even the megabuck Comparex/Hitachi mainframe-style RAID array
that I've been pounding the snot out of for weeks doesn't reach the
performance levels of the software RAID configuration that Joe Greco
built on top of Adaptec controller and bare 50GB 7200 RPM drives (for
his 1.8TB news spool server), and I have 10kRPM drives and can throw
as much as 4GB of on-board controller RAM at the problem. I can get
reasonably close to his levels of performance, but I haven't been
able to equal them.
In fact, to come anywhere *close* to the levels of performance
that Joe has previously mentioned, I've had to add software RAID 0+1
(in the form of vinum) on top of the hardware RAID-5 (we tested the
other forms of RAID, there doesn't seem to be any noticeable speed
improvement), so that you are striped both horizontally and
vertically.
--
These are my opinions -- not to be taken as official Skynet policy
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