From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Dec 9 8:47:34 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from penguin.ipunet.com (penguin.ipunet.com [206.191.39.25]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 217D214FFB for ; Thu, 9 Dec 1999 08:47:30 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from drew@penguin.ipunet.com) Received: (from drew@localhost) by penguin.ipunet.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id LAA33440 for freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG; Thu, 9 Dec 1999 11:32:15 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from drew) Date: Thu, 9 Dec 1999 11:32:15 -0500 From: "Andrew G. Luyt" To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Seeking RAID & SCSI advice Message-ID: <19991209113215.A33388@penguin.ipunet.com> Mail-Followup-To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0pre2i Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Hello, I am putting together a server, which will be used for database-driven web sites, using apache, php, and MySQL, and running on 3.3-STABLE. I am trying to decide on a good RAID implementation for this system, and my choices, due to budget & available hardware, are limited. I have available to me a Mylex Acceleraid 250 Ultra2 SCSI to PCI RAID card, which I could use for hardware-driven RAID. Alternatively, I could use an Adaptec AHA-2940U2W and vinum for RAID. I can't use both cards for the one machine (budget), so my choice is one or the other. Searching through the mailing list archives, I have found only a few mentions of the Acceleraid 250, including a backported driver by Mike Smith. http://www.freebsd.org/~msmith/RAID/mylex/ Has anyone used this driver for production work? If so, is it reliable? Also, is it possible to boot FreeBSD from a disk attached to this controller? In regards to the AHA-2940U2W, I found numerous references to it, including a mention that one of them is used at wcarchive.cdrom.com. However, there were a series of messages back in March which mentioned that the card would hang during the boot sequence, during "waiting for SCSI devices to settle" See: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?db=mid&id=Pine.BSI.3.96.990305112731.15359P-100000@ns2.michweb.net Does anyone know if this problem has been resolved? From what I have read, given that the Adaptec cards seem to be in much wider use (and thus probably better supported), and that vinum appears to give very impressive performance gains, even compared to hardware RAID, I have been leaning towards the Adaptec & vinum solution. Does anyone have any recommendations, or experiences to share? Any replies will be much appreciated, ..agl.. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message