From owner-freebsd-stable Wed May 29 22:59:39 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from globalrelay.com (h216-18-71-77.gtcust.grouptelecom.net [216.18.71.77]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3BC5237B406; Wed, 29 May 2002 22:59:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [24.87.128.100] (HELO cns) by globalrelay.com (CommuniGate Pro SMTP 3.5.9) with SMTP id 1129964; Wed, 29 May 2002 22:59:29 -0700 Message-ID: <010501c2079f$7b37bc80$64805718@cns> From: "Eric Parusel" To: "Matthew Dillon" , "Greg 'groggy' Lehey" Cc: "Scott Long" , "Scott Long" , "Doug White" , "Cy Schubert - CITS Open Systems Group" , "Kirk Strauser" , References: <2C7CBDC6EA58D6119E4A00065B3A24CB04636E@btcexc01.btc.adaptec.com> <20020529134211.L82424@wantadilla.lemis.com> <20020529141141.GC2262@hollin.btc.adaptec.com> <20020530090247.Y82424@wantadilla.lemis.com> <200205300016.g4U0GaBY064168@apollo.backplane.com> Subject: Re: Hardware RAID vs vinum Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 23:01:46 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > But I will interject one point of interest, and that is the cost factor. > As a friend of mine pointed out to me a few days ago, the cost of > RAID hardware has dropped precipitously over the last 5 years. It is > cheap enough now that one might as well just use it on multi-disk > servers. Hopefully this will result in more and better drive support > in FreeBSD, I sometimes get the feeling that we've dropped behind > in that area. Mind if I squeak in one little comment on the state of hardware RAID card support...? I wish I could back it up with come code, but I'm just a lowly sysadmin :) (maybe one day, in one way or another) While as far as I can tell RAID card support is quite stable (knock on wood, thanks guys and girls), there's a noticable absence of RAID array control & status reporting software for many types of RAID cards, including my own (NetRAID 3i, amrd driver). For instance, for my particular type of RAID controller I cannot tell if the array has degraded without walking up to the server and seeing amber warning lights.... :( Good thing I'm not using these cards in a colo :) Even a simple syslog message saying "Houston, we have a problem" would be invaluable.. :) Of course I'm definitely not expecting the world, just though I'd point this out :) By the way I'm using either RELENG_4_5 or -stable on my boxes... Oh, and a question: can software RAID mirrors (via vinum) be booted from? (and still booted from if one drive goes down?) Thanks very much, Eric Parusel To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message