[nycbug-talk] Fibre Channel, RAID, free hardware, oh my!

[pete wright]

On 1/25/06, Charles Sprickman <spork at bway.net> wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I've acquired some stuff that got me excited, and then got me depressed...
>
> -dual 2.4 Xeon box, Intel mainboard
> -Mylex ExtremeRAID 3000 dual-channel fibre channel RAID controller
> -3 NetApp filer shelves w/1.5TB

what model shelves are these?  can you console into them?

<snip>
> So there are really no new FC RAID cards that are supported by FreeBSD,
> but I've still got a nice server and 1.5TB of disks.
>
> I'm considering getting a Qlogic or LSI FC card (with no RAID), but I'm
> really lost on what the state of software RAID in FreeBSD 6 is these days.
> I don't want RAID5, just 1+0 (striped + mirrored).  I've used ccd in the
> past for a news server (just striping), and briefly toyed with Vinum (and
> ran screaming from it).

I'd go for the LSI.  if you can console into the netapp chances are
that there is some sort of management interface that will allow you to
configure how the disks are grouped together.

>
> The handbook only mentions those two options, but I've heard that
> RAIDFrame was being ported and that there was something in GEOM.  Is there
> anything out there that's production quality?  Would you trust a few
> thousand mailboxes to it?  Am I being unfair to Vinum?

Big fan of GEOM on Free for sure.  With this many disks i'd
investigate graid3 (3).


sounds pretty fun, I wish i was falling into some netapp shelves  :^)

-pete

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