From owner-freebsd-scsi@FreeBSD.ORG Wed May 5 08:18:17 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-scsi@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 48BAC16A4CE for ; Wed, 5 May 2004 08:18:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail.sandvine.com (sandvine.com [199.243.201.138]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 80D4A43D1D for ; Wed, 5 May 2004 08:18:16 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from don@sandvine.com) Received: by mail.sandvine.com with Internet Mail Service (5.5.2657.72) id ; Wed, 5 May 2004 11:18:15 -0400 Message-ID: From: Don Bowman To: "'Marc G. Fournier'" , freebsd-scsi@freebsd.org Date: Wed, 5 May 2004 11:18:14 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2657.72) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Subject: RE: Hardware RAID vs Vinum? X-BeenThere: freebsd-scsi@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: SCSI subsystem List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 05 May 2004 15:18:17 -0000 From: Marc G. Fournier [mailto:scrappy@hub.org] > Why one over the other? > > The main advantage I see to Vinum is that it makes doing stuff like > firmware upgrades on a hard drive alot easier, since you see all the > drives ... but, does paying a couple of hundred extra for a RAID > controller give me any major advantages over that? Devices like aac have a cam passthrough (aacp) which allows firmware upgrades and smartmontools etc to work. the advantage to the hardware raid is that you can make the root partition be on the raid, so the machine will still boot if a drive fails, where with vinum, you cannot do that. You also have less worries about vinum changing between FreeBSD versions :) Newer raid controllers have hardware xor support which makes their performance pretty good even with slower processors. --don