Hello,everyone!

I have a Dell Server with Slackware 12.0 installed. To make it safe,I would like to install a RAID card and additional hard drive and use RAID 1.Do you guys have any suggestions on RAID card?Which brand is the most reliable one?

Thanks.

P.S. I want a "TRUE" RAID as opposed to software RAID.

Software raid is sooo easy and free though.

Most distro's now a days have a built in mdadm reconfigurer that can have you running raid in no time in software.

If it ever fails it can email you and to set it back up you just do something like:


mdadm --fail /dev/md0 /dev/hdc1
mdadm --remove /dev/md0 /dev/hdc1
mdadm --zero-superblock /dev/hdc1 (Clearing previous raid info on a disk (eg. reusing a disk from another decommissioned raid array)))
mdadm --add /dev/md0 /dev/hdc1


If is it hardware, how will you know if the array has failed?

I would only recommend using raid1 or 10:

http://www.miracleas.com/BAARF/BAARF2.html

esaym,thanks for your reply.

I have done a "little" research on hardware RAID vs software RAID.As far as I know,software RAID would consume some CPU process resources.If the CPU's load is already demanding,wouldn't it affect the normal operation of other process?

Thanks for your reply.I would consider it.

I don't know if I can give you much or a recommendation but I would recomend NOT getting a promise raid card. I have a EX8300 (Product Page)

And although I got it to work on my system alright it has been down frequently. Promise has a plenty of linux support for the enterprise distros but they are reluctant to support you if you don't have that distro and your hardware is not on there compatibility list.

I've been disappointed with this hardware and am looking towards other cards.

Slick666,thanks for your reply.

It seems to me that your RAID card is pretty useless when it has a lot of assumptions before effectively using it.One more question,is it reliable to use the software RAID?Besides the cons of affecting the CPU speed,what's the other disadvantages?

Thanks.

Dell RAID support in Linux

Third party.. 3Ware has great Linux support SCSI, ATA, SATA all Hardware Based.

When I think Hardware RAID I think High end cards with hot swap, automatic rebuild, Online array expansion, sector sparing, etc..

Not worth wasting my time on low end RAID cards (Poor Support, many are Host-based meaning they rely on the CPU to perform the RAID computations, causing a higher load than just using software RAID in some instances). Software RAID would be a better bet than most low end cards imho.

Seriously check out the 3ware cards though, great Linux support and some of the 2 and 4 port aren't too awful expensive..
and you can even add a hot swap drive cage if you really want to (provided you have the bays available) Other drive cage options


Too bad that's not a Dell Power-edge 2950 I have a spare RAID controller (Integrated PERC RAID controller on the Riser) that I will never use.. Had to replace the riser due to the external array I added at a later date (or was that from the PE 2850 hmmm).. The riser card is nothing but a $800.00 paperweight for me now since it will only work in that model Dell server.

I agree with farslayer

I didn't mean to say that hardware raid is a bad proposition, quite the contrary. What I wanted to highlight is that although promise has linux support I've found it to be relatively shallow. I personally have been looking at 3Ware and downloading there binaries to look at the READMEs and manuals.

Does anyone have any 1st hand experience with 3Ware?