Hardware-based RAID 5 in Linux
 

I'm building my own Linux-based file-storage server to consist of 5 x 250Gb disks put together in a RAID 5 system to give a total of 1 GB (+ 1 disk parity)

For this system I need to buy a reliable RAID 5 hardware controller which is ATA based, not SCSI (price), and I want to make sure I get one that is thoroughly tested with Linux kernel without requiring any patches, fixes or special things, but will simply just run, and reliably store all the small office's valuable data.

Thus I ask the community - do you have any recommendations for such a RAID 5 PCI controller to control the 5 disks under Linux 2.6 kernel?

I've been looking at the Intel SRCS16 based on the Intel® 80302 I/O processor (http://www.intel.com/design/servers/...cs16/index.htm) which claims RedHat and SuSE support, but doesn't say if that's with patched or vanilla kernel.

We're on Slackware 10.2.

Greatly looking forward to learning your RAID 5 experiences!

-Y1

You have three choices:

1. 3ware
2. 3ware
3. 3ware

Well there are other choices but that's going to be your best bang for the buck, and very likely the least expensive Linux-compatible true hardware RAID solution.

Thanks for quick reply.

Checked 3ware.com's website - i there any particular card there you recommend - I'm quite new to RAID myself.

Also - what is your experience with this, and do you need to set up anything in software, or is the disk simply seen as one big 1TB disk by the software as everything is handled in hardware RAID?

Thanks again

-Y1

Hi again,

Just to answer my own question - it turns out that the 3ware RAID-5 controller is twice as expensive as the Intel one, which also claims Linux support.

Does anyone have any experience with the Intel SRCS16, Intel Sawtell RAID-5 SATA 6-ch. 64MB card on Linux?

-Y1

Intel "RAID" cards that I've seen are software-based, not hardware-based. I don't trust software RAID solutions except for non-critical workstations where once the project is done, the data is moved off the software RAID. Sorry, I can't really give you any feedback on those cards vs. 3Ware, but I can tell you to be very, very careful to be 110% certain that the RAID card is hardware RAID and not software RAID.

Intel Raid controller
 

Hi,

Have you gone for the Intel raid controller? What are your experiences with it. I tried it under CentOS 4.4 based SME Server 7, where it didn't perform reliably at all. I had problems with samba dropping network connections with persistent writing over gigabit ethernet, and after going write-back, it seemed to improve but after copying about 8 gigs, the network card stopped responding until a reboot.