Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 10:16:15 -0500 From: "Peter C. Lai" <sirmoo@cowbert.2y.net> To: Ean Kingston <ean@hedron.org> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: vinum vs. DPT smartcacheIV raid Message-ID: <20050216151615.GD20992@cowbert.2y.net> In-Reply-To: <3604.216.220.59.169.1108565897.squirrel@216.220.59.169> References: <20050216065700.GB20992@cowbert.2y.net> <3604.216.220.59.169.1108565897.squirrel@216.220.59.169>
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On Wed, Feb 16, 2005 at 09:58:17AM -0500, Ean Kingston wrote: > > > I have a box with DPT PM2044 SmartCacheIV UW-SCSI PCI cards which can do > > RAID-5 in hardware, but I'd have to use the DOS volume manager to set up > > the array. I have heard reports that vinum woudl be faster than using the > > native card. Is this true? > > Doubtful, though I have heard that there are some rare special > circumstances where software raid can be faster. Given your hardware, you > will probably not experience those conditions. The reason I asked is because http://www.shub-internet.org/brad/FreeBSD/vinum.html suggests vinum can be marginally better than the hardware raid on the smartraid range of cards (which have an even faster processor onboard than the smartcache range). The CPU platform is more or less comparable. Then again it is with old Fbsd, so I don't know how accurate that is. > > > Should I not bother with doing the hardware > > raid > > and just go with vinum? > > Use the hardware RAID, especially if you are going to use a simple RAID > configuration (like one big RAID-5 virtual disk). Just make sure you have > some way of figuring out if one of the disks goes bad. Worst case you > could boot off a DOS floppy once in a while to make sure all the disks are > still good. > > > The rest of the system is a k6-2 400mhz with 256mb ram (amount might > > change). > > I will also have moderate network i/o on the pci bus (obviously). > > -- > Ean Kingston > > E-Mail: ean_AT_hedron_DOT_org > URL: http://www.hedron.org/ > -- Peter C. Lai University of Connecticut Dept. of Molecular and Cell Biology Yale University School of Medicine SenseLab | Research Assistant http://cowbert.2y.net/
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