Another amusing thing about those controllers (once a driver becomes
available) is the cheap hack to turn the cheap $35 dual channel ATA66
controller into the $130 dual channel RAID card by adding one resistor.
Details at:
http://www.geocities.com/promise_raid/english.htm
I'm going to start using them for applications where the data is expendible
(mp3 jukebox comes to mind) where I just want a cheap RAID 0 array to hold a
big chunk of bits. Another good application might be large web farms where
the data on any one web server can go poof without any problems and you can
then stripe a pair of inexpensive IDE disks for better throughput on a
budget. When you're talking 10's or 100's of servers, the savings adds up.
With 40gig ATA66 drives going for under $300 these days (and 10gigs in the
$100 range), it seems like a no brainer in that kind of situation. I'd
never use it on a busy database box, but the economics are quite compelling
in certain situations.
Cheers,
Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: "Martin Bene" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Frank Joerdens" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, March 13, 2000 7:38 AM
Subject: Re: IDE hardware RAID
> At 12:00 13.03.00, Frank Joerdens wrote:
> >Has anyone played with the FastTrak66 Ultra ATA/66 RAID Card (info at
> >http://www.promise.com/Products/ideraid/ft66page.htm)? Is anyone working
> >on a driver for Linux (I've seen that the FreeBSD people are at it)? I
> >think the idea
> >of having IDE HW RAID is pretty cool. They even provide an IDE hotswap
> >kit. Any support for Linux on the horizon?
>
> I've got one of these cards lying around for testing.
>
> Current status: No linux driver available.
> Future prospects: According to an anser I got this weekend from promis
> support, a driver for redhat 6.1 will be released within the next 30 days.
>
> Original mail from support:
> -------------------------------------------
> From: "Steve Pedroza" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: "'Martin Bene'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: RE: Fasttrak66 support for Linux?
> Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 10:06:28 -0800
> Message-ID: <000101bf8abb$5be7d260$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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>
> Hi,
>
> We will be releasing Linx 6.1 drivers in about 30 days.
> -------------------------------------------
>
> Also worth a look: http://www.3ware.com - they've got hardware IDE Raid
> (0/1) controllers for 2 / 4 / 8 Drives (= 2/4/8 seperate channels). They
> already have linux support (Driver source included with card, driver
source
> also included in 2.2.15pre kernels and updates included in Andre Hedricks
> IDE patches. I'm currently testing these as well. Setup of raid devices is
> done using the controller bios.
>
> Positive: Performance is nice, handling of failing disks worked flawlessly
> so far, drivers in kernel + available as source. Monitoring tool available
> to get the current status of the raid devices + Event notifications
> (Reconstruction finished, drive failed..). Rebuilding of mirrors runs as
> background operation during normal system operation.
>
> Negative: The monitoring tool is currently very basic and not available in
> source, I'd have liked to add a few things. There's an issue with recovery
> from power failure/reset that support is still working on, will hopefully
> be resolved shortly(?)
>
> Bye, Martin
>
> "you have moved your mouse, please reboot to make this change take effect"
> --------------------------------------------------
> Martin Bene vox: +43-316-813824
> simon media fax: +43-316-813824-6
> Andreas-Hofer-Platz 9 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 8010 Graz, Austria
> --------------------------------------------------
> finger [EMAIL PROTECTED] for PGP public key
>
>
>
