Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2000 16:10:21 +1030 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: wellsian <wellsian@caffeine.com> Cc: "Kim J. Brand" <kim@simple-mail.com>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: RAID 1 Message-ID: <20000205161021.A11554@freebie.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0002042102140.94611-100000@boris.netgate.net> References: <20000205123943.B9737@freebie.lemis.com> <Pine.BSF.4.21.0002042102140.94611-100000@boris.netgate.net>
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On Friday, 4 February 2000 at 21:24:07 -0800, wellsian wrote: > On Sat, 5 Feb 2000, Greg Lehey wrote: > >> On Friday, 4 February 2000 at 7:55:22 -0500, Kim J. Brand wrote: >>> i'm trying to build a small server for a client moving up from a WIN95 server. >>> >>> <snip> >>> >>> i'd appreciate any help you can provide, >> >> You don't seem to have mentioned a problem. >> >>> (willing to pay for advice too.) >> >> Well, here's some free advice: check out vinum (man -a vinum, >> http://www.lemis.com/vinum.html). You could save yourself a lot of >> money. > > We spent lots of time researching RAID solutions. It isn't too difficult > to come up with _something_, but the bottom line is that most of the > things out there are made for Windows, including new motherboard raid > options. Unless some kind soul developer has taken a product line under > their wing and decided to create support then you're working on the edge > and this violates most goals I'm aware of that call for RAID in the first > place. You're not "working on the edge", it just doesn't work. > You can figure out vinum and make a beautiful system but when > there's a failure it's going to be you back at the console fixing > things. That applies to all RAID systems. You'll probably also need to change a disk. > If you want something you can install and get away from then > investigate SCSI<->SCSI solutions. To the computer and OS they > present whatever picture you want of the disks under their control, > and they looks like disks. No special support necessary. When there's a failure it's going to be you back at the console fixing things. > They'll cost more initially and may not match the best performance > you can get from a local vinum raid, but service is almost trivial > and support is available. I'd be interested in details of this. What I've seen has not been that simple. Certainly the support for the DPT RAID cards has been less than spectacular. > The best ones? Can't say, but there are quite a few. Just to be sure > we're talking about the same things, here's one from Mylex: > > ftp://ftp.mylex.com/pub/prodinfo/dacsx/dacsx.pdf We will also support the Mylex RAID cards in release 4.X of FreeBSD. > There are also FC<->SCSI versions, and some even allow you to connect > multiple hosts to the array. Shop around. > > Oh, be careful of the versions that are SCSI cards. These can be tricky to > restore or control as the controlling/monitoring software is (once again) > Windows based. This is what I'm talking about. > Sad state of affairs... Stick with a nice supported SCSI card and an > external (to your SCSI card) RAID controller. So how does the support software work there? Greg -- When replying to this message, please copy the original recipients. For more information, see http://www.lemis.com/questions.html Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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