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Date:      Mon, 25 Oct 2004 15:25:32 -0600
From:      Scott Long <scottl@freebsd.org>
To:        Brad Knowles <brad@stop.mail-abuse.org>
Cc:        freebsd-current@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: FreeBSD 5.3b7and poor ata performance
Message-ID:  <417D6F4C.9000404@freebsd.org>
In-Reply-To: <p0600205fbda318006656@[10.0.1.3]>
References:  <14479.1098695558@critter.freebsd.dk><417D25E8.6080804@ng.fadesa .es>  <200410251928.01536.victor@alf.dyndns.ws><200410251837.58257.Thoma s.Sparrev	ohn@btinternet.com><417D3F12.20302@DeepCore.dk> <417D40A1.9030802@ng.fadesa.es><417D45F1.9090504@freebsd.org> <77F3FD4D-26BE-11D9-9A2F-003065ABFD92@mac.com><417D58B6.5030509@fr eebsd.org	> <F5F15CA0-26C5-11D9-9A2F-003065ABFD92@mac.com> <417D65F1.2040809@freebsd.org> <p0600205fbda318006656@[10.0.1.3]>

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Brad Knowles wrote:
> At 2:45 PM -0600 2004-10-25, Scott Long wrote:
> 
>>  RAID-0 yes, RAID-10 no, at least not for software RAID.  The machine
>>  winds up having to transfer the same data twice across the PCI bus,
>>  twice through the controller, etc.  If the controller is on a simple
>>  PCI-32/33 bus then it will quickly become saturated.
> 
> 
>     I can't speak for GEOM, but my experience with vinum is that 
> software RAID, especially RAID-1+0 will totally smoke the bare hardware, 
> and will smoke most any PCI hardware RAID controller you put it up against.
> 
>     Granted, my experience is a few years old, so if you've got any more 
> recent data that shows in detail what the current situation is and 
> explains why, I'd love to see it.  Until then, I stand by my results at 
> <http://www.shub-internet.org/brad/FreeBSD/vinum.html>.
> 

Software RAID does indeed have less latency than PCI RAID, and will 
often result in higher performance.  But as was said, there is always
a performance vs. reliability tradeoff.  And when you are talking about
RAID-10 with a bunch of disks, you will indeed start seeing bottlenecks
in the bus.

Scott



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