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re: Software RAID, a bit OT

To: linux-xfs@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: re: Software RAID, a bit OT
From: Walter R Fletcher <fletcher@xxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 16:35:43 -0600 (MDT)
In-reply-to: <20020717205829.WTGT1185.imf06bis.bellsouth.net@TAZ2>
Sender: owner-linux-xfs@xxxxxxxxxxx
Hi all,

     I am NOT a storage GURU, but I can vouch for the 3Ware 7850
RAID controller. I have eight 120 gig Maxtors in a RAID5 configuration
mounted as one enormous 860 gig XFS partition.

     I have users writing to this filesystem via NFS from a number
of Sun, SGI, and Linux systems.  I've had a few NFS related reliability
snags that I'm slowly tracking down, but have nothing but praise for the
7850 itself as far as economics/performance is concerned.  It's fast
(directly comparable to a 250 Gig SCSI RAID we have attached to an
Ultra80) and simple to set up.  So far, the money seems well spent.

-- Reid

  Reid Fletcher, WB7CJO
  Senior Systems Analyst / Unix Systems Administrator
  Department of Geology and Geophysics                  P. O. Box 3006
  University of Wyoming                                 1-307-766-6227
  Laramie,  WY   82071                  Internet:  Fletcher @ UWyo.Edu

    Are we all roadkill on the information highway?  - Jeff Greenfield

On Wed, 17 Jul 2002, Greg Freemyer wrote:

> Ben,
> 
> If you can scrap together another $500, I would consider dropping those 
> Promise controllers and adding a 3ware controller.
> 
> As I understand it, with the Promise controller you can still only do one 
> disk seek operation at a time.  This eliminates the performance advantages of 
> RAID.
> 
> Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
> 
> With the 3ware it does the RAID in hardware and does overlapping seeks.  
> (They have just changed there model numbering scheme, so I can't remember 
> what the new model numbers are.)
> 
> If you stick with Promise controllers, I don't know if RAID 1+ 0 will be any 
> faster than RAID 5 or not.  I would guess they will be almost the same speed. 
>  All the RAID performance descriptions I know assume your hardware supports 
> overlapping seeks.


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