[H-GEN] RAID controllers on MoBos

[Gary Curtis]

On 3/5/07, David Jericho <david.jericho at aarnet.edu.au> wrote:
> Gary Curtis wrote:
> > Size wise, I'm thinking 3x320Gb disks in a RAID 5, plus a
> > single disk for the OS. Not that fussed about mirroring the
> > OS disk. I would spring for a hot spare in the RAID if the
> > combined IQ of HUMBUG thought it was wise.
>
> Disk so embarrassingly cheap now days, just buy two of everything.
>
> No, really.
>
> Choose a good case with a top vent, and a bundle of drive bays across
> the front (the ThermalTake Armour series are a good example), and buy
> two of every hard drive.

I was actually thinking of the ThermalTake Eureka, so close enough.

> Buy at least another one as a hot spare.

Happy with this.

> RAID 10 with a hotspare only requires 5 disks for the same capacity as
> you've mentioned above (and only $260 more). The result is an array
> that's not only faster on reads, but significantly faster on writes,
> doesn't suffer the problems of RAID 5 with respect to parity during
> recovery, and has an order of magnitude higher reliability.

So is there any merit in separating OS and data, or do I just
create a big RAID10 with md and store the lot in there?

> Disks will die. Don't risk your data on RAID 5.[0]

I read the link. I get it now. NO RAID 5!

> As for SATA RAID controllers, my experience has given me two solutions.
> The first one is a SAN, the second one is 3ware. Outside of that, just
> use software RAID. As Stephen correctly pointed out a lot of the onboard
> controllers are just hardware assists, and as such will suffer the same
> problems as a software RAID array during a failure event.

So the mobo (ASUS P5B-E+) with its whole mess of SATA2
plugholes is fine as I am not using the onboard "raid", I'm just
using them as individual disks (from the mobo's viewpoint).
That was a question?  (...and I understand that the mobo may
have other problems, I'm just talking about the disks.)

> [0] http://www.baarf.com/ is a good  source of info on why RAID 5 sucks.
>
> --
> David Jericho
> Senior System Administrator, AARNet
> Phone:     +61 7 3317 9576
> Mobile:    +61 4 2302 7185
>

And thanks for the input so far.

Gaz
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