Lyle Schlueter wrote:

Hello,

I just started looking into software raid with linux a few weeks ago. I
am outgrowing the commercial NAS product that I bought a while back.
I've been learning as much as I can, suscribing to this mailing list,
reading man pages, experimenting with loopback devices setting up and
expanding test arrays. 

I have a few questions now that I'm sure someone here will be able to
enlighten me about.
First, I want to run a 12 drive raid 6, honestly, would I be better of
going with true hardware raid like the areca ARC-1231ML vs software
raid? I would prefer software raid just for the sheer cost savings. But
what kind of processing power would it take to match or exceed a mid to
high-level hardware controller?

I haven't seen much, if any, discussion of this, but how many drives are
people putting into software arrays? And how are you going about it?
Motherboards seem to max out around 6-8 SATA ports. Do you just add SATA
controllers? Looking around on newegg (and some googling) 2-port SATA
controllers are pretty easy to find, but once you get to 4 ports the
cards all seem to include some sort of built in *raid* functionality.
Are there any 4+ port PCI-e SATA controllers cards? 
  

Depending on your needs for transfer rate vs. capacity, newegg has at 
least one external enclosure which holds (from memory) 8 drives, and 
brings the data down on a single SATA connector. If you need lots of 
data online but not a high transfer rate, this might be useful. I was 
offered the enclosure as a "deal" with a DVD burner, don't know what 
they were thinking there. Ordered the DVD Tues, arrived Wed, but I don't 
need the hot swap case.

Are there any specific chipsets/brands of motherboards or controller
cards that you software raid veterans prefer?

Thank you for your time and any info you are able to give me!

Lyle

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-- 
bill davidsen [off-list ref]
  CTO TMR Associates, Inc
  Doing interesting things with small computers since 1979