Dell PERC

[Liam Proven]

On 25/09/2007, Noah Dain <noahdain at gmail.com> wrote:
> However, I don't think there are any percs that
> support ide drives.

I've installed a number of Dell servers with IDE RAIDs controlled by
Dell hardware controllers. Usually, I use the SME Server distro (a
development of eSmith, bought by Mitel, who kept the name but killed
the product).

Dell use the name CERC for their IDE hardware RAID controllers. In
fact they are rebadged ALI MegaRAID cards.

e.g. <http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/power/en/ps1q02_hogge?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz>
http://tinyurl.com/26q6z7

NB: I refer to them as "hardware RAID controllers" to distinguish them
from the cheap "firmware RAID" controllers, as found integrated into
many motherboards, which don't do the RAID parity & checksumming
calculations on board; this is done by the CPU and the "RAID
controller" is basically merely some additional IDE or SATA channels
and a special driver that presents multiple drives to the OS as a
single one. These are generally considered inferior to true RAID
controllers and it's preferable to use Linux kernel software RAID.


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