From owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jun 30 21:14:45 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: hardware@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6FE4816A41C for ; Thu, 30 Jun 2005 21:14:45 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from simon@optinet.com) Received: from cobra.acceleratedweb.net (cobra-gw.acceleratedweb.net [207.99.79.37]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 19C6343D48 for ; Thu, 30 Jun 2005 21:14:44 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from simon@optinet.com) Received: (qmail 58635 invoked by uid 110); 30 Jun 2005 21:14:44 -0000 Received: from ool-18ba9d5e.dyn.optonline.net (HELO win2kpc1) (simon%optinet.com@24.186.157.94) by cobra.acceleratedweb.net with SMTP; 30 Jun 2005 21:14:44 -0000 From: "Simon" To: "Danny Howard" Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2005 17:18:15 -0400 Priority: Normal X-Mailer: PMMail 2000 Professional (2.20.2661) For Windows 2000 (5.0.2195;4) In-Reply-To: <20050630205744.GN33728@ratchet.nebcorp.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: <20050630211444.19C6343D48@mx1.FreeBSD.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Content-Filtered-By: Mailman/MimeDel 2.1.5 Cc: Bob Bomar , "questions@freebsd.org" , "hardware@freebsd.org" Subject: Re: RAID Cards X-BeenThere: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: General discussion of FreeBSD hardware List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2005 21:14:45 -0000 It's not only CPU factor, I don't trust software RAID. As for monitoring, I can tell whether or not a drive is dead via SAFTE chip and all SCSI RAID cards support SAFTE and a proper SCSI server would have SAFTE support. As for SATA, the 3ware cards have 3dm tool to monitor the array. -Simon On Thu, 30 Jun 2005 13:57:44 -0700, Danny Howard wrote: >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/ >