Date: Sat, 29 Apr 2000 12:31:51 -0400 (EDT) From: "Brandon D. Valentine" <bandix@looksharp.net> To: Mark Powell <M.S.Powell@salford.ac.uk> Cc: Joe Karthauser <joe@pavilion.net>, freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: How good is AMI MegaRAID support? Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0004291208080.20399-100000@turtle.looksharp.net> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.05.10004281317330.36296-100000@plato.salford.ac.uk>
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On Fri, 28 Apr 2000, Mark Powell wrote: >I appreciate the good work Simon and Mike are doing in this area. However, >I wanted to know what is the current RAID solution of choice for FreeBSD. >As I'm sure you understand I need a proven solution. I can definitely appreciate that. The RAID solution of choice for FreeBSD appears to be SCSI-SCSI RAID adapters as utilized on wcarchive.cdrom.com and ftp.freesoftware.org -- the two busiest ftp archives around and consequently the two busiest disk subsystems around. Both of these configations utilize the latest Adaptec 78xx based PCI SCSI controller attached to a SCSI-SCSI RAID adapter. In the case of wcarchive it is a Mylex DAC960SXI SCSI-SCSI 6 channel RAID controller, w/256MB cache. ftp.freesoftware.org doesn't reveal to us what sort of SCSI-SCSI RAID controller is in use but I would assume it's the same or similiar to wcarchive since TeraSolutins, Inc. had a hand in both systems. This approach does offer a layer of protection from scsi controller obsolesences or driver bitrot. You put a relatively cheap well supported SCSI controller in your machine and interface it to your external RAID canister. That controller can be replaced and upgraded as necessary while still keeping the same disk subsystem behind it. It also allows you to forget about bugs in the raid code or availability of something like mlxcontrol since it's all handled in hardware. You can also attach multiple hosts to the RAID canister, allowing more than one system to use the same disks. That can also come in handy if you need redundant servers but don't want to mirror all of your content. The decision all comes down to just how future proof you need to be and how much money you have to sink into your project. Brandon D. Valentine -- bandix@looksharp.net Illegitimi non carborundum. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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