RAID

[Joost Schuttelaar]

Yeah. If I'm correct there is a big difference between hardware RAID and hardware RAID... most hardware RAID devices are just a tiny controller with a bit of firmware and let the CPU handle things. The only advantage hardware RAID *can* have, is that the OS can do an operation such as "copy blocks x...y to z" and let the controller handle it (often using DMA). With software RAID and soft hardware RAID the CPU will have to access blocks manually.

Uh... I just read about the Intel one at (http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/matrixstorage_sb.htm) and it looks like it does DMA and fancy things like native command queuing... my info is dated :)

-- 

Joost Schuttelaar
The Hague, NL

On Jun 12, 2011, at 0:38 , Peter Korsten wrote:

> 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
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