From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Feb 9 15:16:01 2007 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D0C6B16A407 for ; Fri, 9 Feb 2007 15:16:01 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from matrix@itlegion.ru) Received: from corpmail.itlegion.ru (corpmail.itlegion.ru [84.21.226.211]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 2805E13C471 for ; Fri, 9 Feb 2007 15:16:00 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from matrix@itlegion.ru) Received: (qmail 42769 invoked from network); 9 Feb 2007 18:15:59 +0300 Received: from unknown (HELO Artem) (192.168.0.12) by 84.21.226.211 with SMTP; 9 Feb 2007 18:15:59 +0300 X-AntiVirus: Checked by Dr.Web [version: 4.33, engine: 4.33.5.10110, virus records: 175110, updated: 9.02.2007] Message-ID: <01e601c74c5d$31be19c0$0c00a8c0@Artem> From: "Artem Kuchin" To: References: <00ad01c74b65$79db1710$0c00a8c0@Artem> <20070208094620.GA9599@rink.nu> <00a701c74b6e$7c3e4550$fe03a8c0@claylaptop> <20070208165224.GA35610@icarus.home.lan> <004401c74c31$f8159160$0c00a8c0@Artem> <45CC72D4.9040104@lxnt.info> Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2007 18:15:53 +0300 Organization: IT Legion MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="utf-8"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.3028 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.3028 Subject: Re: What is a good choice of sata-ii raid controller for freebsd? X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 09 Feb 2007 15:16:01 -0000 Alexander Sabourenkov wrote: > Artem Kuchin wrote: >> hi! >> >> I am the original poster of this thread. I have read many interesting >> reply during these two days. However, as i said in the original >> message due to certification issues i am pretty limited to INTEL >> controllers and i have not seen a single relevant reply about them. >> This is interesting. Nobody uses Intel controllers on FreeBSD or >> they just suck that much? > > If you have enough SATA ports and no need for fancy RAID levels, > then my advice is to use gmirror. > > Hardware RAID1 buys you nothing in perfomance and reliability > for a prolonged headache with drivers, bios insanity and > monitoring+control tools. Hm... two points here. I, somehow, do not really believe that software raid (gmirror for example) is as reliable as hardware. I, deeply inside, believe that i might screw things very badly under some heavy load and bad timing conditions. Can't explain it. it is religious i guess, but i can be very wrong about this. However, two perfomance point: Under gmirror OS must issue two commands to write to disks and some commands to check/set mark that mirrored data is intact. Under hardware RAID OS issue sonly one command to write and no checking command, since raid controller handles this async. So, software OS raid must be slower than controller based raid anyway. Am i right here? Any benchmark data on this? As for reliability of gmirror. I just need to know how it works to see for myself that if power turned off in some racing condition gmirror will know that disk are out of sync. If it is done than gmirror must check sync of disks every read, and that mean two command for reading too, which must slow down things. Is it true? -- Artem