Hardware vs software raid

Aaron C. de Bruyn aaron at heyaaron.com
Thu Oct 20 15:00:06 UTC 2011


I'n not sure about the whole hardware -vs- software faster/slower
issue--but I do know when we picked hardware RAID, we had issues with
cards failing and the underlying drives being inaccessible without the
card.
You'd think if you have two drives in a RAID1 and the card died you
could simply plug one of the disks directly into the motherboard and
continue on without the card--but that doesn't seem to be the case.

The partition tables are usually offset because the card reserves an
initial chunk of the drive for its data.  We would regularly have to
run the linux 'testdisk' command to locate and re-write the partition
table in the correct spot.  Then re-RAIDing the drives after the RAID
card came in would be a huge hassle because one drive would have
issues because we re-wrote the partition table.

On the flip-side, I've never had trouble with software RAID in Linux.
It *seems* a little slower to me, but I've never run any tests.

-A

On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 07:46, Dan Trevino <dantrevino at gmail.com> wrote:
> Software raid.  The biggest impacts to your performance are going to be
> outside the hardware/software raid decision (network, DB, etc, etc).
>
> Also, I'm not sure if this applies in your case, but never depend on drivers
> that are only available from a single source.
>
> Dan
>
> On Oct 19, 2011 7:36 PM, "Diego Xirinachs" <dxiri343 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi list,
>>
>> We are about to implement open bravo on our organization and need a new
>> server.
>>
>> I decided to get a dell r310 but I dont know if I should get the hardware
>> raid or just configure software raid on the server.
>>
>> I have been reading about this but still I am undecided.
>>
>> What do you think?
>>
>> Cheers
>>
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>
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