Re: Software raid VS hardware raid

2013-01-30 Thread Modulok
My other concern is what happens when one drive goes down if we use gmirror? Is it completelly transparent and bad drive can be hot swapped while server is running and rebuild started? I am thinking now about gpt+gmirror (including boot and swap) Artem Yes. In fact, you can test this by

Re: Software raid VS hardware raid

2013-01-30 Thread Artem Kuchin
30.01.2013 1:01, Warren Block: On Tue, 29 Jan 2013, Artem Kuchin wrote: 29.01.2013 18:57, Warren Block: On Tue, 29 Jan 2013, Artem Kuchin wrote: The Handbook chapter on gmirror talks about the problems with GPT and GEOM metadata. In short: right now, they conflict. It's possible to

Re: Software raid VS hardware raid

2013-01-30 Thread Andrea Venturoli
On 01/28/13 21:43, Artem Kuchin wrote: I am planning to use mirror configuration of two SATA 7200rpm 2TB disks. I personally vote for gmirror in this case; I've used it a lot and found it very good wrt to both performance and robustness. You can spend the extra money you spare on the

Re: Software raid VS hardware raid

2013-01-30 Thread Artem Kuchin
30.01.2013 18:06, Warren Block: On Wed, 30 Jan 2013, Artem Kuchin wrote: 30.01.2013 1:01, Warren Block: On Tue, 29 Jan 2013, Artem Kuchin wrote: 29.01.2013 18:57, Warren Block: On Tue, 29 Jan 2013, Artem Kuchin wrote: The Handbook chapter on gmirror talks about the problems with GPT

Re: Software raid VS hardware raid

2013-01-30 Thread Paul Kraus
On Jan 30, 2013, at 8:10 AM, Andrea Venturoli wrote: You can spend the extra money you spare on the controller buying good disks; as someone else pointed out don't get desktop-class ones, but 24x7 ones. Server Class drives buy you some improvement, but my recent experience with Seagate

Re: Software raid VS hardware raid

2013-01-30 Thread Artem Kuchin
There seems to be one more advantage to gmirror If i understood correctly gmirror label -v -b split -s 2048 data da0 da1 da2 will create a tripple mirror raid 1, that is triple redundancy, which is hardly available on any hardware raid. Am i correct here? Also, does anyone know how to choose

Re: Software raid VS hardware raid

2013-01-30 Thread Warren Block
On Wed, 30 Jan 2013, Artem Kuchin wrote: 30.01.2013 18:06, Warren Block: GPT partitions should work, just limit it to one mirrored partition per drive. Please, clarify what you mean here. If only one GPT partition on a drive is mirrored with another GPT partition on another drive, head

Re: Software raid VS hardware raid

2013-01-30 Thread Paul Kraus
On Jan 30, 2013, at 10:22 AM, Warren Block wrote: If you want to use the same drive for booting, it's possible. Create all three partitions on both drives manually. Then mirror the freebsd-ufs partition only. The contents of the freebsd-boot partition don't change often, and swap does

Re: Software raid VS hardware raid

2013-01-30 Thread Artem Kuchin
30.01.2013 19:28, Paul Kraus: On Jan 30, 2013, at 10:22 AM, Warren Block wrote: If you want to use the same drive for booting, it's possible. Create all three partitions on both drives manually. Then mirror the freebsd-ufs partition only. The contents of the freebsd-boot partition don't

Re: Software raid VS hardware raid

2013-01-30 Thread Warren Block
On Wed, 30 Jan 2013, Artem Kuchin wrote: Also, not being able to boot if first disk has some error in boot section or just strangly dead is not an option too. However, i was just thinking, if i use gmirror then bios does not know anything about it. I may set both harddisk as boot disk, but if

Re: Software raid VS hardware raid

2013-01-29 Thread Artem Kuchin
29.01.2013 11:54, Michael Powell: Artem Kuchin wrote: I guess what I'm trying to point out is that low performance wrt software RAID will stem from other things besides just simply consuming a few CPU cycles. Today's CPUs have the cycles to spare. I've been using gmirror for RAID 1 mirrors

Re: Software raid VS hardware raid

2013-01-29 Thread Michael Powell
Artem Kuchin wrote: [snip] The server is going to be a web server with many sites and with mysql running on it. Nothing really really heavy. Currently with run all this on our own server with 8 cores and 16GB ram and 3ware raid1 and cpu load is about 5% :) Everything is quick and responsive.

Re: Software raid VS hardware raid

2013-01-29 Thread Warren Block
On Tue, 29 Jan 2013, Artem Kuchin wrote: My other concern is what happens when one drive goes down if we use gmirror? Is it completelly transparent and bad drive can be hot swapped while server is running and rebuild started? I am thinking now about gpt+gmirror (including boot and swap) As

Re: Software raid VS hardware raid

2013-01-29 Thread Artem Kuchin
29.01.2013 18:57, Warren Block: On Tue, 29 Jan 2013, Artem Kuchin wrote: The Handbook chapter on gmirror talks about the problems with GPT and GEOM metadata. In short: right now, they conflict. It's possible to mirror GPT partitions, but be aware that if you mirror more than one partition

Re: Software raid VS hardware raid

2013-01-29 Thread Mark Felder
On Tue, 29 Jan 2013 08:57:31 -0600, Warren Block wbl...@wonkity.com wrote: As far a gmirror is concerned, yes, drives can be removed and new drives inserted while the mirror is running. Hot swap is more of an issue with the hardware. I have not tried it with SATA drives, although I think

Re: Software raid VS hardware raid

2013-01-29 Thread Warren Block
On Tue, 29 Jan 2013, Artem Kuchin wrote: 29.01.2013 18:57, Warren Block: On Tue, 29 Jan 2013, Artem Kuchin wrote: The Handbook chapter on gmirror talks about the problems with GPT and GEOM metadata. In short: right now, they conflict. It's possible to mirror GPT partitions, but be aware

Software raid VS hardware raid

2013-01-28 Thread Artem Kuchin
Hello! I have to made a decision on choosing a dedicated server. The problem i see is that while i can find very affordable and good options they do not provide hardware raid or even if they do it is not the best hardware for freebsd. The server base conf is 8core 32gb ram 2.8+ ghz. So, maybe

Re: Software raid VS hardware raid

2013-01-28 Thread Per olof Ljungmark
On 01/28/13 21:43, Artem Kuchin wrote: Hello! I have to made a decision on choosing a dedicated server. The problem i see is that while i can find very affordable and good options they do not provide hardware raid or even if they do it is not the best hardware for freebsd. The server base

Re: Software raid VS hardware raid

2013-01-28 Thread Daniel Feenberg
On Mon, 28 Jan 2013, Per olof Ljungmark wrote: On 01/28/13 21:43, Artem Kuchin wrote: Hello! I have to made a decision on choosing a dedicated server. The problem i see is that while i can find very affordable and good options they do not provide hardware raid or even if they do it is not

Re: Software raid VS hardware raid

2013-01-28 Thread Paul Kraus
On Jan 28, 2013, at 3:43 PM, Artem Kuchin wrote: I have to made a decision on choosing a dedicated server. The problem i see is that while i can find very affordable and good options they do not provide hardware raid or even if they do it is not the best hardware for freebsd. I prefer SW

Re: Software raid VS hardware raid

2013-01-28 Thread Michael Powell
Artem Kuchin wrote: Hello! I have to made a decision on choosing a dedicated server. The problem i see is that while i can find very affordable and good options they do not provide hardware raid or even if they do it is not the best hardware for freebsd. The server base conf is 8core