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Date:      Wed, 6 Jun 2001 10:18:26 +0930
From:      Greg Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org>
To:        groggy@iname.com
Cc:        freebsd-questions <questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: raid/vinum/ide
Message-ID:  <20010606101826.C39199@wantadilla.lemis.com>
In-Reply-To: <200106060041.QAA12255@en26.groggy.anc.acsalaska.net>; from groggy@iname.com on Tue, Jun 05, 2001 at 04:41:59PM -0800
References:  <200106060041.QAA12255@en26.groggy.anc.acsalaska.net>

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On Tuesday,  5 June 2001 at 16:41:59 -0800, groggy@iname.com wrote:
> i am facing 2 choices i believe after checking out various
> ways of providing effective hard drive speed/redundancy for a
> DB.  it seems RAID 10 is the best way to go if you can afford
> the space lost compared to RAID5.  so - i am looking for any
> recommendations regarding these 2 IDE based methods:
>
> 1. vinum RAID10 (one drive per IDE controller).
>     * downside seems to be lack of hot-swappability.

Correct.

>     * system needs to come down and be serviced to make a swap.

Depending on the service.  As you said before, IDE isn't hot
swappable.

>     * vinum maybe slower than a 2 or 4 drive external solution

There's no reason to believe this.  It could be faster.

> 2. Promise external IDE RAID storage with SCSI interface
>    capable of 4 IDE drive each on their own controller
>    (UltraTrak100)  http://www.promise.com
>     * expensive ($1500 or so)
>     * onboard CPU (i dunno how fast this would make RAID5 on it)

Check the speed of the onboard CPU.  They're usually very slow.

>     * hotswappable IDE interface (ie - user maintainable)

IDE isn't hot swappable.  Anything which claims to do it is making
tradeoffs.

SCSI-connected RAID is not the best performer; you can get bottlenecks
in the SCSI connection.  Theoretically you can transfer 35 MB/s to an
IDE disk; RAID often transfers in parallel, so your SCSI interface
needs to be at least 140 MB/s (i.e. in practice 160).  Is it?  In
addition, once the data gets to the controller, it needs to be
rearranged before it can be put on the disks.  The converse applies
for reading.

> this will be a production machine whose 24/7 reliability is critical.
> please reply off the list as well as i am not subscribed.
> i am mainly concerned with A) SPEED B) RELIABILITY/MAINTAINABILITY

Sounds like you need a high-end RAID adaptor.

Greg
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