Ok,
So I did go with the 3ware-8006-2lp card and no issues yet..
I do prefer HW raid if it is at my disposal but its been a while since I
have had to deal with this.
I do remember about firmware or onboard raid was fake but did not dawn
on me till I had the
update issue. Went back and researched the onboard chipset and it does
not support linux.
So another face palm on my part.
But I do like the older 3ware (ol-reliable) cards to do HW raid. I have
not worked with any of the
new LSI gear yet.
I do Like the Supermicro servers though (FAST)..
Dave
On 5/16/2012 3:07 PM, Eric Shubert wrote:
On 05/16/2012 11:54 AM, Dan McAllister wrote:
I also found it interesting, Eric, how I'm willing to pay for the HW
controller, but do NOT use RAID on my backup location, while you prefer
to save on the HW controller but spend on the redundancy in the backup
storage! Different histories create different priorities! :-)
Yep.
I think the drives are considerably less than the controllers these
days. ;)
Besides which, I have an ulterior motive for using a raid-1 array for
backup drives. While the backups are done over the internet, I
wouldn't want to even think of doing a recovery across the internet.
In the event of a recovery, I would remove one of the drives from the
array (they're external drives), and take it to the recovery location.
That way recovery is much speedier, and the other backup drive is left
online to be of service to other backups. This way the recovery
process is speedy, and doesn't affect other backups that may share the
same raid-1 array. Also, an extra copy of the data is left at the
backup site for use in the event that something were to happen to the
drive being transported. Once the recovery is complete, the drive is
returned to the array and data is re-sync'd.
If my backups fail, they get restored when the backup runs again)...
the only time I could get hosed would be if my backup drive(s)
failed and I had a catastrophic (RAID) failure at the same time --
and since they're a continent apart (geographically), I think the
risk is acceptable (given the added cost my hosting company applies
to using multiple drives!
I don't use a hosting company. I think that self hosting is a better
way to go in some cases, and I expect to see more of it in the future.
I know I'm bucking against the cloud. Time will tell.
However, the performance I look at when evaluating RAID (both technology
and implementation) is the /degraded /performance -- as that's likely to
be the only measurement with significant differentiation.
Degraded performance isn't much different. However, re-synchronizing
makes a big impact indeed. A 1TB drive typically resyncs in 6 hours or
so though (iirc), so it's tolerable so long as the re-sync is done
during off hours (presuming there are off hours).
--
David Milholen
Project Engineer
P:501-318-1300
