[WBEL-users] IDE RAID controller

[Nick Bright]

If you are going to go with SATA I can reccomend the LSI Megaraid
series of SATA controllers (except the 2 channel version, which has
been discontinued). All of the LSI Megaraid SATA controllers are real
honest-to-goodness hardware raid (not like those cheaper controllers),
and use the very mature, stable, and proven megaraid.o or megaraid2.o
driver. I have used the LSI MegaRAID SATA 150-4, LSI MegaRAID SATA
150-6 w/ battery backup, and LSI MegaRAID SATA 300-8X (the only SATA 2
card on the market, IIRC). All have had quite good performance,
excellent stability and OS support.

I highly reccomend these cards, but they are NOT inexpensive! I paid
about $475 for the 300-8X SATA 2 card. But I'll tell you what, it has
been worth every penny.

If you can't afford REAL hardware RAID, don't mess with those stupid
software raid controllers that try to hide it all in the driver. They
suck, especially for real server usage. Since you are using WBEL, you
probably don't want to jack around with something that won't be
stable. If you're going to go software, use linux's MD. If you're
going to go hardware, be prepared to spend some bucks.

 - Nick Bright
   Terra World, Inc
    http://home.terraworld.net

On 6/7/05, John Morris <jmorris at beau.org> wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-06-06 at 08:53, Tom Brown wrote:
> 
> > Need to purchase an IDE RAID controller that will work well with WB 3 or 4
> >
> > Any suggestions as to what to buy/avoid ?
> 
> First you have to make the big decision, software or hardware RAID.  If
> you are ready to pony up the bux for real hardware then keep
> researching.  But if you are going software then I'd advise you GO
> software.  The proprietary drivers do a good job of hiding everything so
> that it looks like a single drive but in reality they perform just like
> the built in software RAID in linux, except the Linux RAID has been
> through a lot more QA and code review.  And mdadm will send you email
> when a drive fails.
> 
> That means forget the vendor supplied driver that never works right and
> requires constant care and feeding across kernel upgrades.  Just make
> sure the card you buy is supported as ordinary IDE interfaces by the
> stock kernel IDE drivers and most qualify in that regard.  Then use
> thier proprietary BIOS interface just once, to make sure it is switched
> off and the interfaces are ordinary IDE.  Make sure you have /boot on a
> RAID1 so grub will boot it or keep one drive on the motherboard's normal
> interface for /boot.  The only feature I don't get from my Highpoint 4
> port card is hot plug and if I dug around enough I could probably get
> that working.
> 
> --
> John M.      http://www.beau.org/~jmorris     This post is 100% M$Free!
> Geekcode 3.1:GCS C+++ UL++++$ P++ L+++ W++ w--- Y++ b++ 5+++ R tv- e* r
> 
> 
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