Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2005 13:57:44 -0700 From: Danny Howard <dannyman@toldme.com> To: Simon <simon@optinet.com> Cc: Bob Bomar <bob@ibsd.us>, "questions@freebsd.org" <questions@freebsd.org>, "hardware@freebsd.org" <hardware@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: RAID Cards Message-ID: <20050630205744.GN33728@ratchet.nebcorp.com> In-Reply-To: <20050630205128.84DFBD9825@ratchet.nebcorp.com> References: <42C45161.1070402@toldme.com> <20050630205128.84DFBD9825@ratchet.nebcorp.com>
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On Thu, Jun 30, 2005 at 04:48:18PM -0400, Simon wrote: > Just because there is no monitoring tool available due to lack of > support, doesn't mean the card itself is bad. I much prefer hardware > implementation than software. True hardware RAID frees up a lot of > CPU time if you have heavy IO and software just can't keep up if you > utilize CPU intensive apps. When you have a dual Xeon setup, you are more likely to be bound by disk than CPU. And a RAID that you can not monitor is a BAD RAID. The biggest thing that bothers me about my current environment is that I have remotely-deployed machines with RAIDs and I can't tell when a disk goes bad unless I visit the datacenter. Last time I was there I had a RAID card throwing an audible alarm, even though nothing was wrong. I had to reboot a critical system to fix that. If you can implement it in software, then its worth the headaches you'll avoid with hardware dependencies. If you're concerned at CPU overhead, spend the cash you would have spent on a RAID card and upgrade your CPU. Sincerely, -danny -- http://dannyman.toldme.com/
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