Re: [PLUG] Real (driverless) hardware RAID controller for PC?

[James Barrett <jadoba@jadoba.net>]

+1 for software raid's stability and lack of catastrophic "gotcha"s, but features are lacking. Some motherboards might not cooperate with hotplugging drives, and performance will lag since the CPU will be taxed doing RAID stuff. I'll second the concern about LSI cards sometimes doing horrid things. At my current situation, about 1/8 of the raid failures in the field nodes turn out to be bad cards... but when it works, it works.

If performance is an important variable and cost is not an issue, go for an HP solution. We've been using HP rackmounts for years and the raid controllers never fail us.

--
Jim Barrett
Galloway, NJ
http://www.jadoba.net/

On Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 6:46 PM, K.S. Bhaskar <bhaskar@bhaskars.com> wrote:

Just my two bits' worth, but I don't trust hardware RAID.  It's a single point of failure, and sometimes if the card fails, a replacement card is unable to rebuild the RAID.  I just build software RAID arrays using mdadm.

-- Bhaskar

On Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 6:38 PM, Keith C. Perry <kperry@daotechnologies.com> wrote:

I'll second the LSI and Adaptec hardware variants but given the choice I would go with software raid of lvms.

---
KP-

On Oct 22, 2014 6:15 PM, John Kreno <john.kreno@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Off the top of my head, I think LSI, Adaptec and Areca. Of course none of them are cheap. But they make cards that do hardware raid. Alot of people are moving away from this though as it ties you to the hardware.
>
>  -John
>
> On Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 6:07 PM, Greg Helledy <gregsonh@gra-inc.com> wrote:
>>
>> We are now using a repurposed linux-based desktop PC as our small business internet gateway.  *After* getting things installed and tweaked, they tell me they'd like RAID added, for reliability.  The card already on hand is a HighPoint RocketRaid model, which it turns out is one of those "fake raid" devices that requires a driver.  This seems like a hassle, now and in the future if the kernel is updated.
>>
>> Looking online, I'm having a hard time determining which RAID controllers are "real" (driverless) vs. fake.  Many years ago, we had a couple of 3Ware cards, but 3Ware seems to have faded away.  If anyone has a recommendation for a manufacturer (or specific models) of "real" RAID controllers, please pass it my way.  2 X SATA for RAID 1 is all I need.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> --
>> Greg Helledy
>> GRA, Incorporated
>> P:  +1 215-884-7500
>> F:  +1 215-884-1385
>> www.gra.aero
>>
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> --
> John Kreno
>
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