[PlanetCCRMA] RAID questions...kernel patch?

[Fernando Lopez-Lezcano]

On Fri, 2005-05-20 at 02:25, Steve Harris wrote:
> On Tue, May 17, 2005 at 03:50:01 -0700, Fernando Pablo Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
> > On Tue, 2005-05-17 at 13:26, Aaron Trumm wrote:
> > > The mobo is an ASUS p4p800se and it has two drives, which of course, we want
> > > to act like one, be mirrored, for safety, all that good stuff...  our
> > > current version of the server uses gentoo and can't take advantage of the
> > > ASUS hardware raid, but we're thinking we might be better off using the
> > > hardware raid than a software raid...
> > > 
> > > I've read a couple places that I may need to patch the kernel - which is why
> > > I ask here, because the other goal is to improve its performance, and I
> > > don't think the current server even has any realtime patches, it's just a
> > > straight 2.4 kernel.  so I was thinking about just doing a mostly planet
> > > style install...
> > > 
> > > anybody have any clues?  *turns eyes at fernando...*  *grin*
> > 
> > *fernando tries (unsuccessfully) to walk away from the virtual room*
> > 
> > The kernel does not have anything extra (in terms of outside patches)
> > and I don't know which hardware raid devices it may support. Most of the
> > mobo level raid devices are just software raid, they need a special
> > driver on windows (which, surprise, does the raid thing :-) But again, I
> > don't know which ones may be exceptions to that rule. 
> 
> The expensive ones :) there not likly to be in onboard chipsets. 3ware
> cards are genuine hardware RAID, and most of them are supported.

That's what I have in two of my servers. But I ended using them as very
fast multiple drive sata interfaces for software raid5 (they are 64 bit
66 MHz cards, if you use a lot of drives regular 33MHz will eventually
saturate the pci bus). Write performance was not good. 

-- Fernando