Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 01:30:31 -0600 From: Scott Long <scott_long@btc.adaptec.com> To: Eric Parusel <lists@globalrelay.net> Cc: Matthew Dillon <dillon@apollo.backplane.com>, "Greg 'groggy' Lehey" <grog@freebsd.org>, Scott Long <Scott_Long@adaptec.com>, Doug White <dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu>, Cy Schubert - CITS Open Systems Group <Cy.Schubert@uumail.gov.bc.ca>, Kirk Strauser <kirk@strauser.com>, freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Hardware RAID vs vinum Message-ID: <20020530073031.GA3228@hollin.btc.adaptec.com> In-Reply-To: <010501c2079f$7b37bc80$64805718@cns> 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> <010501c2079f$7b37bc80$64805718@cns>
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On Wed, May 29, 2002 at 11:01:46PM -0700, Eric Parusel wrote: > > 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.. :) The big problem is that while most companies can be persuaded to share the specs on how to talk to the card and the arrays, few will share the specs on the management interface that allows you to control and monitor the thing. Adaptec is the only one that I know of that produces FreeBSD versions of their management apps, and they would never dream of publishing the source code to them (except the for the asr controllers, but that's a different story). > > 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?) I believe that you can boot a vinum RAID-1 array by having the BIOS treat the master disk as a boot disk. Then during the boot process, vinum will start and recognise the mirror, allowing you to mount it as root. This cannot work for a striped array, because the BIOS has no idea of how that kind of thing works. Scott To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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