Hardware vs software raid

[Nick Fox]

I can tell you from experience running an open bravo server you will want
all the hardware performance you can get. Go hardware raid.
On Oct 20, 2011 12:49 PM, "Preston Hagar" <prestonh at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 11:56 AM, Diego Xirinachs <dxiri343 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Again, thanks all for the input,
> > Michael, great information! just to be clear, I meant RAID 1 not 0
> (little
> > typo there). I currently have RAID 1 software raid on a samba server I
> > mantain. I think Im going to use the same type for this server (only that
> > with hardware RAID) because of the easy troubleshooting in case of
> failure
> > (just replace RAID card and thats it).
> > Also, I was wondering if you can provide the Dell mailist list subscribe
> > link? or where can I find it?
> >
> >
>
> We have mainly Dell hardware and used their hardware RAID (PERC cards)
> for a while, but have been trying to phase them out in favor of Linux
> or FreeBSD software RAID for a while now.  We never saw significant
> performance gains (as another poster said, it is often other things
> like network that are the bottleneck) and the management was much more
> difficult with the PERC cards.
>
> As a simple test, if you can before you go into production, setup your
> RAID array in your hardware card, then pull a drive out while the
> system is running.  Then try to go through the steps to get it back
> fully on line.  Do the same with a software RAID machine.  We always
> found software RAID to be much easier.  With most of Dell stuff, it
> often unofficially supports Ubuntu, but officially they typically only
> support Red Hat enterprise and Suse enterprise.  It will probably work
> on Ubuntu, but we have found that, even with the extra paid support
> contracts, unless you are running a version of Linux they like, with
> their servers, their controller cards, and even their drives,
> purchased from them with their firmware, they won't really support you
> and will blame it on whatever they can.
>
> We have had many problems with PERC-based hardware arrays not
> rebuilding, complaining about drives not matching (even though they
> do) or other oddities.  With software RAID, you can throw just about
> anything at it and it will make the disks work.
>
> If you are working for a large organization with hundreds to thousands
> of Dell servers, I could see going with their hardware RAID.  If you
> have a handful of servers (say less than 15 or so), then I would stick
> with Software RAID.  You will get much more support from the community
> and Wikis than you will from Dell when things go wrong and it will be
> much easier to deal with when you have a drive failure and you need to
> replace it.
>
> just my 2 cents.
>
> Preston
>
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