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Date:      Thu, 9 Dec 1999 11:32:15 -0500
From:      "Andrew G. Luyt" <drew@penguin.ipunet.com>
To:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Seeking RAID & SCSI advice
Message-ID:  <19991209113215.A33388@penguin.ipunet.com>

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Hello,

I am putting together a server, which will be used for database-driven
web sites, using apache, php, and MySQL, and running on 3.3-STABLE.

I am trying to decide on a good RAID implementation for this system,
and my choices, due to budget & available hardware, are limited.
I have available to me a Mylex Acceleraid 250 Ultra2 SCSI to PCI RAID
card, which I could use for hardware-driven RAID.  Alternatively, I could
use an Adaptec AHA-2940U2W and vinum for RAID.  I can't use both cards
for the one machine (budget), so my choice is one or the other.

Searching through the mailing list archives, I have found only a few
mentions of the Acceleraid 250, including a backported driver by Mike
Smith. 
http://www.freebsd.org/~msmith/RAID/mylex/
Has anyone used this driver for production work?   If so, is
it reliable?  Also, is it possible to boot FreeBSD from a disk
attached to this controller?

In regards to the AHA-2940U2W, I found numerous references to it, 
including a mention that one of them is used at wcarchive.cdrom.com.  
However, there were a series of messages back in March which
mentioned that the card would hang during the boot sequence, during 
"waiting for SCSI devices to settle" See:
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?db=mid&id=Pine.BSI.3.96.990305112731.15359P-100000@ns2.michweb.net

Does anyone know if this problem has been resolved?

From what I have read, given that the Adaptec cards seem to be in 
much wider use (and thus probably better supported), and that vinum
appears to give very impressive performance gains, even compared to
hardware RAID, I have been leaning towards the Adaptec & vinum solution.

Does anyone have any recommendations, or experiences to share?

Any replies will be much appreciated,

..agl..



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