On Mon, 28 Sep 2015, Carlos E. R. wrote:
It is not simply "a driver" :-)
That is pretty much irrelevant. Software Linux RAID does the same and I don't think there is really a great performance penalty.
There is a large penalty compared with (real) hardware raid.
Quantify it then. And explain why it is relevant. Even mainstream NAS devices with even dozens of disks (I believe) use software RAID.
The issue is with these cards that (a) it requires a driver for the OS to even see the RAID as a RAID and (b) that it requires a driver to pretty much do anything.
What you need is not a driver, there is almost no such thing in Linux. You just need that the kernel guys implemented support for your particular brand of fake raid in the kernel. If it is there, chances are your /raid/ will just work out of the box.
Then call it a kernel module for all I care. I hope you have made your point. And I don't see what the deal is in differentiating "driver" and "kernel module". We call these things drivers. Get used to it.
The advantage, its use case, is that in double boot machines, the Windows side may already be using it, and thus, you need the Linux side to support it too. However, there is no posibility of Windows being able to use a Linux software raid.
What advantage is that? You mean that theoretically it would be possible to get a form of software raid that works in both linux and windows? That's not much of an advantage although it is much more than nothing. I bought the card for its eSATA ports though (also, or mostly). I needed more than 4 sata ports in my machine. Although I can't say I was not unpleasantly surprised to learn that it was indeed a form of software raid. But since the thing is not dual boot and since it runs Linux and since the Debian installer has very good raid support, getting raid setup was realy very easy. However, managing it is less so. :(. Regards, B. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org