iMac or MBP...

[Peter Korsten]

Op 12-6-2011 0:20, Martin Naef schreef:

> How would you boot the machine? The Intel ICH9R controller supports
> RAID, so I'd assume I can just install the OS on the main volume?

Well... RAID support is nice and all that, but from what I gather, the 
ICH9R RAID puts a lot of work on the CPU anyway, and Linux on it only 
supports RAID 0, 1, and 10 - at least, according to Supermicro. Or it 
could be that they (Supermicro) only support those. I have no experience 
with ICH9R RAID, so I can't give a meaningful answer, other than what I 
might find with Google.

Also, if your mainboard dies, you'll lose your entire array.

My guess would be to either hook up an additional (old?) small capacity 
S-ATA drive and do software RAID 5 on the other discs, or install the OS 
on a USB stick, which could then go either in the back or perhaps even 
on the USB port on the motherboard itself.

By the way, the reason I mentioned the X7SPA-HF-D525 and not the 
X7SPA-H-D525 is that the former has IPMI, so you can actually access the 
BIOS and have a virtual KVM over one of the LAN ports (via sideband 
data). For a machine that is usually without keyboard and display, that 
seems a good idea.

- Peter