Date: Wed, 17 May 2006 18:09:58 +1000 From: Adrian <adrian.jfl@gmail.com> To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Recommendations for hardware RAID? no 3ware please ! Message-ID: <c0a4ca3a0605170109r1474c5cdq26d5176a5926cf30@mail.gmail.com>
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Hi, We have ~15 FreeBSD servers using different hardware. Most of the servers we have are using recent IDE 3ware controllers (eg 7450) in a RAID 5 configuration. I've always found these more trouble than they're worth. Sometimes the wrong drive degrades and so when I replace the drive and try and rebuild the array it repeatedly fails. I need to take the whole machine offline and spend a long time sector-scanning each drive (using powermax - they're Maxtor drives) and generally discover there is a hardware fault with one of the other drives.. If the drive with the actual error cannot be repaired using a sector level tool, it's then impossible to rebuild the array because the errors on the non-degraded drive keep causing the rebuild to fail so I have to rebuild the whole machine on a new array. Anyway - I like the IBM X series and we have had good experience with IBM's support... Unfortunately FreeBSD doesn't seem to fully support the Adaptec hostRAID technology yet - It will recognise the array in FreeBSD version 6 but if you pull a drive out the whole thing dies (it is dangerous to half-support a RAID controller like this). Can anyone recommend a vendor (Dell, HP etc) that will make my life easier? (no reboots, good management tools and monitoring) - I'm a bit over putting machines together myself to save a few dollars. Thanks, Adrian.
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