Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2003 16:15:06 +0100 From: Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@ofug.org> To: fs@freebsd.org Subject: RAID alternatives Message-ID: <xzp4r82y1ol.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no>
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I'm planning a new system to replace my aging 350 MHz K6-2, and am
considering various options for increasing disk performance and
reliability. I'm thinking of running RAID level 5 across three or
four identical IDE disks. The question is what RAID solution to pick:
- Software RAID (free, but can't boot from it, and possibly not 100%
reliable). Options include:
- RAIDframe: "should be considered highly experimental". Any
experiences with this? Does it work? Is it fast? Is it
reliable? I see it requires wiring down the drive IDs, which
vinum doesn't IIRC.
- Vinum: I've had mixed experiences with this. There have been
some embarassing bugs, particularly in the recovery code, and it
has had a tendency to crash the system. Has it improved with
age?
- GEOM: might be an option in a year or so, but not now.
- Hardware RAID (more expensive, but less hassle and possibly higher
performance). The problem here is that IDE RAID controllers don't
seem to support RAID 4 or 5; they only support RAID 0, which is
pointless on its own; RAID 1, which is horribly wasteful; and JBOD,
which is just a fancy name for disk concatenation, and is even more
pointless than RAID 0. The exception seems to be the 3ware 7500
series - which FreeBSD doesn't seem to support. I'd be happy to be
contradicted :)
DES
--
Dag-Erling Smorgrav - des@ofug.org
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