Thomas Davis wrote:
>
> James Manning wrote:
> >
> > Well, it's kind of on-topic thanks to this post...
> >
> > Has anyone used the systems/racks/appliances/etc from raidzone.com?
> > If you believe their site, it certainly looks like a good possibility.
> >
>
> Yes.
>
> It's pricey. Not much cheaper that SCSI chassis. You only save money
> on the drives.
>
Interesting... The 100GB Internal RAID-5 SmartCan I purchased from
RaidZone was approx. $5k. The quotes I got for a SCSI equivalent ranged
from $10k to $15K. Personally I consider half the cost significantly
cheaper. I also was quite impressed with a qoute for a 1TB rackmount
system in the $50K range, again SCSI equivalents were significantly
higher...
> Performance is ok. Has a few other problems - your stuck with the
> kernels they support; the raid code is NOT open sourced.
Performance is pretty good - these numbers are for a first generation
smartcan (spring '99)
-------Sequential Output-------- ---Sequential Input--
--Random--
-Per Char- --Block--- -Rewrite-- -Per Char- --Block---
--Seeks---
Machine MB K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU
/sec %CPU
raidzone 100 6923 89.7 25987 26.6 14230 28.9 7297 89.4 215121 77.7
16407.3 69.7
raidzone 200 6537 86.2 22175 21.5 14297 30.2 7667 92.5 56355 36.0
377.5 3.1
Softraid 100 6598 86.0 43411 36.5 12077 27.4 6180 77.9 54022 46.4
721.4 4.1
Softraid 200 8337 87.9 25373 24.0 9009 18.8 8952 87.1 34413 21.7
301.1 2.2
The two sets of numbers were measured on the same computer & hardware
setup (500Mhz PIII w/ 128MB, 100GB Smartcan w/ 5 24GB IBM drives).
"raidzone" is using Raidzone's most recent pre-release version of their
Linux software (BIOS upgrades & all). "Softraid" was based on early
alpha release of RaidZone's linux support which basically allowed you to
access the individual drives. RAID was handled by the Software Raid
support available under RedHat Linux 6.0 & 6.1. Both were set up as
RAID-5
Using "top":
- With "Softraid" bonnie and the md Raid-5 software were sharing the
cpu equally
- With "raidzone" bonnie was consuming most (>85%) of the cpu and no
other processes
and "system" < 15%
Getting back to the discussion of Hardware vs. Software raid...
Can someone say *definitively* *where* the raid-5 code is being run on a
*current* Raidzone product? Originally, it was an "md" process running
on the system cpu. Currently I'm not so sure. The SmartCan *does* have
its own BIOS, so there is *some* intelligence there, but what exactly is
the division of responsibility here...
John
--
John Burton, Ph.D.
Senior Associate GATS, Inc.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 11864 Canon Blvd - Suite 101
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal) Newport News, VA 23606
(757) 873-5920 (voice) (757) 873-5924 (fax)
