From owner-freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Oct 26 13:55:06 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 91AC816A41F for ; Wed, 26 Oct 2005 13:55:06 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from 000.fbsd@quip.cz) Received: from home.quip.cz (grimm.quip.cz [213.220.192.218]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2563F43D45 for ; Wed, 26 Oct 2005 13:55:05 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from 000.fbsd@quip.cz) Received: from [192.168.1.2] (qwork.quip.test [192.168.1.2]) by home.quip.cz (Postfix) with ESMTP id 677AAA22; Wed, 26 Oct 2005 15:55:03 +0200 (CEST) Message-ID: <435F8ACF.20203@quip.cz> Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2005 15:55:27 +0200 From: Miroslav Lachman <000.fbsd@quip.cz> User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.11) Gecko/20050728 X-Accept-Language: cs, cz, en, en-us MIME-Version: 1.0 To: FreeBSD-ISP References: <20051026091105.0d5cbafd.lists@yazzy.org> In-Reply-To: <20051026091105.0d5cbafd.lists@yazzy.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Marcin Jessa Subject: Re: SATA software RAID-inkernel vs hardware X-BeenThere: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Internet Services Providers List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2005 13:55:06 -0000 Marcin Jessa wrote: > Hi guys. > > I need to set up a server with two RAID1 SATA drives to do mirroring. > I was wondering if there was any point in using software RAID > controllers like FastTrak S150 TX4. > I've found some info avaliable for Linux and people say kernel raid is > as good as any BIOS raid. Would that be true for FreeBSD as well? > Also using a PCI card for the disc drives in place of the built in SATA > interface may degrade performance, since the built in SATA is probably > on a different PCI bus to plug in cards. AFAIK built-in RAIDs on cheap mainboard are on the same bus, as plug in PCI cards sharing same IRQ. Some manufacturers are explaining this in manuals. Few months ago I was testing built-in SATA RAID on older ASUS board (with Silicon Image onboard SATA RAID). BIOS RAID was unstable and I was not able to found why. Then I setup gmirror which was OK. But all was just home testing, never used in production. > So what would you guys suggest? Keep the card or go for inkernel > implementation? > > Marcin. So my suggest is real HW RAID card (if you have money), or gmirror, but not onboard "pseudo raids". Miroslav Lachman