software RAID 1: does it use a lot of resources?
 

Hello

I run a file server in my office which has RAID 1 on all of it. It is 1gz P3 with 1Gb ram.

I went for software RAID because it is cheaper. I have not noticed any speed problems, (eg, I have not noticed it being slow at all) and we have a lot of people (20+) writing to it constantly.

I was previously concerned that software RAID 1, being run by the kernel/cpu would eat up a load of resources and be slow to write to. However, it is not.

Am I alone? Or is software RAID 1 really well optimised and barely affects the system at all?

Hamish

What soft do you need ? RAID 1 doesnt work good on linux...

AFAIK, it works without delays.

Linux software RAID1 uses hardly any resources, RAID5 is the only one you really have to worry about because the kernel has to calculate the parity of every write.

Hello

I'm very pleased to hear all your positive comment.


mmmm : what do you mean it doesn't work well? I have it working very nicely. Have you had some bad experiences?

If software raid works so well, is there any advantages to buying a hardware card to do raid 1?

hamish

Transparent raid is sometimes preferred, e.g, if you have more than one OS installed on the Harddrive.

Some other specific features provided by the raid card is useful like dedicated cache.

Thanks for your thoughts on RAID. I have a related question:

In a file and print server, is RAM the most important component (obviously after data safety etc)?

Hamish