Followup: Lack of support for soft RAID

[Tim Schmidt]

On 9/5/06, Andrew Jorgensen <andrew.jorgensen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Arguments about which RAID setup is best aside I think it definitely
> makes sense to support fake-raid out of the box if it's reasonably
> easy to do so.  If Fedora can do it so can we.  It sounds like
> low-hanging fruit.
>
> Is fake-raid actually worse than software raid in any way?  From what
> I've heard it sounds like fake-raid is software raid except that the
> configuration is stored in BIOS.  Please don't answer that question -
> it is purely rhetorical.  No more flame wars.
>
> In any case it isn't for us to force a user to either use software
> raid or figure out fake-raid on their own.  Software raid vs fakeraid
> sounds like a completely philosophical choice.  If the user is already
> using fakeraid for whatever reason that's their business.

So...  you didn't read http://linux.yyz.us/why-software-raid.html

You know, the page where the Linux SATA maintainer lists 18 points in
favor of software RAID (all but one or two are equally damning of fake
RAID), and 4 points in favor of hardware raid (none of which apply
well to fake RAID).  Software RAID is clearly superior most of the
time for most people.  Hardware RAID has a few advantage that can, in
specific situations, outweigh it's significant disadvantages.  Fake
RAID has no advantages (and many specific disadvantages).  If someone
should choose to use it because they made the mistake of using it to
store data at some previous time, so be it.  It's use shouldn't be
encouraged.

Which is not to say that I'm opposed to shipping it on the CDs...  it
can be usefull to have access to data stored on a set of drives, say,
under Windows.  However, if we ship it, we should put up an
informative wiki page - at least - I'd prefer a default to software
raid in the installer (if RAID is selected) and an informative blurb
about the problems involved with fake RAID.

--tim