From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Jun 26 21:29:12 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 47E5616A41C for ; Sun, 26 Jun 2005 21:29:12 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from brett@lariat.org) Received: from lariat.org (lariat.net [65.122.236.2]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DC22443D49 for ; Sun, 26 Jun 2005 21:29:11 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from brett@lariat.org) Received: from Anonymous.lariat.org (IDENT:ppp1000.lariat.net@lariat.net [65.122.236.2]) by lariat.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id PAA00544; Sun, 26 Jun 2005 15:28:58 -0600 (MDT) X-message-flag: Warning! Use of Microsoft Outlook renders your system susceptible to Internet worms. Message-Id: <6.2.1.2.2.20050626150740.053e8dc0@localhost> X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 6.2.1.2 Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2005 15:28:35 -0600 To: Björn König From: Brett Glass In-Reply-To: <42BF15DB.7030303@cs.tu-berlin.de> References: <200506261830.MAA29221@lariat.org> <42BF15DB.7030303@cs.tu-berlin.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Best hardware to mirror IDE drives under FreeBSD? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2005 21:29:12 -0000 At 02:53 PM 6/26/2005, Björn König wrote: >You don't need an additional controller necessarily, because you can set up a RAID 1 with two single ATA hard disks. You'll find a small how-to at [1]. Even most cheap ATA chipsets have hot-swap capabilities. > >[1] http://people.freebsd.org/~rse/mirror/ > >I have good experiences with SATA PCI controllers from Highpoint. Interesting. We are not using FreeBSD 5. in production, because it seems as if 5-STABLE is only now reaching the level of stability we have come to expect from FreeBSD. (It looks as if we might be able to stop using 4-STABLE when 6.0-RELEASE or 6.1-RELEASE comes out, so long as the TCP/IP stack is re-optimized and disk performance improves by then.) So, we don't have the ability to use anything that's based on the GEOM subsystem. Nonetheless, the Web page is intriguing. Will the GEOM RAID subsystem really allow the machine to run and/or boot from either drive? It looks as if the machine is instructed to do different stages of the boot from different drives, so I'm concerned that if either drive fails a reboot might fail. The ata(4) man page mentions support for RAID 1 on Promise and Highpoint (Adaptec?) RAID controllers. These tend to be less expensive than brands like 3Ware (which I'd use for RAID5 but seems like overkill for RAID 1). Have folks had good experience with these? Will they work on 4-STABLE? --Brett