[nycbug-talk] Fwd: Adaptec AAC raid support

[pete wright]

On Mon, 21 Mar 2005 16:51:59 -0500, Marco Scoffier <marco at metm.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 21, 2005 at 12:23:42PM -0800, pete wright wrote:
> >The main benefit I see with hardware RAID controllers are Battery
> >Backup Units
> 
> With the raid controller in JBOD mode wouldn't you still have the interface to
> the battery backup (which I didn't know about) but you would have the benefit
> of bypassing buggy firmware and using a nice consistent open source (less buggy
> etc.) raidframe or vinium.  It seems to me that (how much?) performance is the
> only real (or supposed) benefit.
> 

sure.  i think that is most likely a benifit of running a mixture of
hardware striping and software RAID (in my case tracking parity etc.) 
Granted most of the work I have done with these types of setups are
*not* open source.  Specifically it's been with IBM Fiber Channell
disk array's attached to SGI Octane's.  I found that having the
flexibility to utilize some of the features on the disk controller as
well as features with software RAID to be quite helpfull (although
more complicated to manage).

While I do not have any emperical evidence of there being a benefit of
using hardware RAID, but I feel pretty comfortable in stating that
hardware is the way to go if performance is paramount for what you
want done (in my case playing back high resolution video).  Can it be
done on software, sure, altho I do not think the system will not be as
stable or scalable.

-pete
> Now, I've got to get back to work...
> 
yea i gotta start :)
-p


-- 
~~o0OO0o~~
Pete Wright
www.nycbug.org
NYC's *BSD User Group