Hello Rogier, On Fri, 13.10.2006 at 13:38:32 +0200, Rogier Krieger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 10/13/06, Toni Mueller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >[...] whether I should stick with RAIDframe [...] or if I should go for > >hardware RAID instead [...] > > Personally, I find using hardware RAID a lot easier. You can stick > with GENERIC kernels and have fewer problems on installing/upgrading. > For me, that's worth the extra cash spent on hardware.
I already have a stack of GDT controllers lying around, or actually in use. It's not so much a question about money although the feeling that I'm not getting "my money's worth" in hardware RAID doesn't make me want to spend more on it. Eg. with my GDT cards, I can only reboot into the controller bios to find out what the state of the RAID or the drives is, the latter also only in a limited way, far from the level of detail eg. smartmontools give, and no way near being as non-disruptive as they are. > >[...] and fly blind (or which ways do I have to monitor the health > >status of disks and RAID [...] w/o disrupting normal operation?). > > Using bioctl(8), I find that you're far from blind. Thanks for pointing me to bioctl - I was unaware about that - but I don't offhand see how I could eg. collect SMART status on the drives hanging off such a card. Since the machines may very well be not in reach, I don't fancy beeping or blinking drive enclosures. I need log entries instead. The man page of bioctl doesn't show me any related functionality, only how I could be commanding a card to do something some time later, but w/o any relation to the operating system. I consider that still being blind. In case of using hardware RAID, I'd also like to have something that can diagnose the card, especially, if said card has a fan... Best, --Toni++
