Jason Bailey, Sun Advocate Webmaster wrote:
I've always felt software raid was too much of a tax on the system, not to mention less reliable (regardless of OS). I've always preferred hardware raid. We use Escalade SATA RAID cards (RAID level 1) in our SUSE servers because the RAID cards have onboard processors, so the OS doesn't need to know the RAID is even there (no need for RAID drivers). They work really, really well... and that saves on CPU cycles.
On modern systems the cpu load is no longer an argument, even if you were to use software RAID5. The real argument is ease of use: software raid cannot include /boot, so you have to provide redundancy for /boot in some other way. I also insist on hotplug drives, so I can change a broken hdd without taking the system down. Even more important, I don't have to think about the necessary steps or commands, just rip out the broken drive and plug in the new one, the controller takes care of the rest. That is something I can do even if I suffer from sleep deprivation. (^-^) -- Sandy List replies only please! Please address PMs to: news-reply2 (@) japantest (.) homelinux (.) com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org