From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Bill Davidsen Subject: Re: Software raid - controller options Date: Thu, 08 Nov 2007 13:10:32 -0500 Message-ID: <47335118.9070407@tmr.com> References: <1194315635.17361.20.camel@localhost.localdomain> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <1194315635.17361.20.camel@localhost.localdomain> Sender: linux-raid-owner@vger.kernel.org To: Lyle Schlueter Cc: linux-raid@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-raid.ids Lyle Schlueter wrote: > Hello, > > I just started looking into software raid with linux a few weeks ago. I > am outgrowing the commercial NAS product that I bought a while back. > I've been learning as much as I can, suscribing to this mailing list, > reading man pages, experimenting with loopback devices setting up and > expanding test arrays. > > I have a few questions now that I'm sure someone here will be able to > enlighten me about. > First, I want to run a 12 drive raid 6, honestly, would I be better of > going with true hardware raid like the areca ARC-1231ML vs software > raid? I would prefer software raid just for the sheer cost savings. But > what kind of processing power would it take to match or exceed a mid to > high-level hardware controller? > > I haven't seen much, if any, discussion of this, but how many drives are > people putting into software arrays? And how are you going about it? > Motherboards seem to max out around 6-8 SATA ports. Do you just add SATA > controllers? Looking around on newegg (and some googling) 2-port SATA > controllers are pretty easy to find, but once you get to 4 ports the > cards all seem to include some sort of built in *raid* functionality. > Are there any 4+ port PCI-e SATA controllers cards? > Depending on your needs for transfer rate vs. capacity, newegg has at least one external enclosure which holds (from memory) 8 drives, and brings the data down on a single SATA connector. If you need lots of data online but not a high transfer rate, this might be useful. I was offered the enclosure as a "deal" with a DVD burner, don't know what they were thinking there. Ordered the DVD Tues, arrived Wed, but I don't need the hot swap case. > Are there any specific chipsets/brands of motherboards or controller > cards that you software raid veterans prefer? > > Thank you for your time and any info you are able to give me! > > Lyle > > - > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html > > -- bill davidsen CTO TMR Associates, Inc Doing interesting things with small computers since 1979