Date: Tue, 2 May 2000 00:07:33 +0200 From: Brad Knowles <blk@skynet.be> To: "Brandon D. Valentine" <bandix@looksharp.net>, Mark Powell <M.S.Powell@salford.ac.uk> Cc: Joe Karthauser <joe@pavilion.net>, freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: How good is AMI MegaRAID support? Message-ID: <v04220805b533ae83fa7a@[195.238.24.94]> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0004291208080.20399-100000@turtle.looksharp.net> References: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0004291208080.20399-100000@turtle.looksharp.net>
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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 ====================================================================== Brad Knowles, <blk@skynet.be> || Belgacom Skynet SA/NV Systems Architect, Mail/News/FTP/Proxy Admin || Rue Colonel Bourg, 124 Phone/Fax: +32-2-706.13.11/12.49 || B-1140 Brussels http://www.skynet.be || Belgium To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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