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[Scott <catfather AT donpoo.net>]

Hey David,

On Sep 24, 2007, at 4:57 PM, David Brain wrote:
> First question, what is the driver behind limiting yourself the
> hardware raid? - there are advantages and disadvantages of both
> approaches. Software RAID is really very capable - a combination of
> LVM & Sofware RAID results in a very capable system - has good
> management and monitoring features, hot spares etc. etc.

LVM and Software RAID do some good stuff. Primary drivers for me that  
helped me decide for hardware RAID are:

* Most motherboards have 6 SATA ports  and I need just that many to  
hold 6 x 750GB drives. I don't want to boot off the data array either
* With 6 large drives parity calculation becomes performance factor.  
I had planned to offload this on to a dedicated RAID CPU and keep the  
system CPU low. This has the added advantage of less heat and noise  
due to reduced thermal requirements
* The 8port 3ware card (for example) gives me room to grow beyond 6  
drives easily enough

> For Hardware  RAID - all the newer Dell server RAID  (PERC cards)  are
> essentially LSI SATA hardware RAID cards in some form or another.
> Linux support is decent from the driver standpoint, management support
> is functional but a bit limited (theres a somewhat odd webapp and a
> CLI management tool that's a bit quirky, and has limitied docs...).
> But it can definitely be made to work - I have a PERC 5 running
> currently with 15 SAS drives attached.

I've only briefly considered SAS instead of SATA. I think the cost  
for SAS drives would be more expensive? I would like to avoid an  
external dedicated enclosure, again because of heat and noise reasons.

Essentially, I'm looking to get 4TB raw capacity while avoiding as  
much heat and noise issues as I can. I also, of course desire  
performance and reliability. Finding the right balance within a  
budget is the trick, of course.

--
Scott <catfather AT donpoo.net>
AIM: BlueCame1