Re: 1x 3ware controllers vs. 2x 3ware controllers

On Sun, 1 Aug 2004, Gordon Henderson wrote:

What I find amusing these days is trying to work out the "boundary" point
between a "traditional" server with an (external) RAID controller and say
a Linux server with software RAID in a purely fileserving environment (eg.
NFS/Samba, not used for local operations at all) ... Both systems as a
unit provide the same services - ie. filespace at the end of the Ether,
but what are the advantages of one over the other, and why would I ever
want a hardware RAID controller in a PCI slot in a Server PC?

Discuss... ;-)

Let's say you have a database server with a large RAID1+0 array. If you do
this in software, you have to transfer data over the PCI bus twice if you
do the raid in software, not so if you do it in hardware.

But I agree, it's like "what is the best car?" It all depends on your
needs and budget. A Porsche 911 is perfect for people who need to go
places fast, it's useless for people who need to haul things.

You always have to optimize everything after your needs, do you need 
highspeed sequencial access, do you need low latency small accesses, do 
you need a lot of fast low latency writes, etc. All these require 
different solutions.

-- 
Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike@swm.pp.se