Topic: IDE RAID successes, anyone?

[Andy MacDonald]

Just wondering if anyone has had any success with implementing IDE RAID. I'm going to build a new e-smith box, and would like to get away from software raid if I can. I've not heard of anyone accomplishing hardware IDE RAID yet.

[herculito]

Hi Andy,

I have contacted promise technology for drivers for the fasttrack family of IDE RAID, they have no plans for supporting e-smith in the near future and no plans of releasing the source code.
They do however have another IDE RAID (hardware engine) card with drivers
(source code)  SuperTrak SX6000.( six channels, RAID 5)

Hope this helps,

Herc

[Gary Parker]

Hi all...I got a Promise UltraTX100 a few months back with the intention of using it in my e-smith but discovered that the chipset on it isn't supported in the 2.2 kernel that e-smith uses. This isn't a hardware RAID card, in fact most of the Promise cards aren't *real* hardware RAID, they just emulate it in the driver. As such you're actually better off using the software RAID that's built into the linux kernel, it performs far better than the Promise drivers.

I actually managed to access the IDE ports on the Promise card on a bog-standard e-smith box by passing the memory addresses to the kernel at boot and telling it manually there was an IDE controller there but this wouldn't do any sort of DMA or UDMA xfers and performance was attrocious. The best thing we can do is wait for the e-smith team to go up to 2.4 (something that's *not* happening yet in 5.5!) where there's native support for these controllers.

A few people (including myself) on the devinfo list have tried a hacked together e-smith 5.12 with a 2.4 kernel and it worked beautifully with the Ultra TX100...

Have patience young Jedi

Gary

[Kelvin]

I've been using IDE Mirroring controllers (RAID 1) based on Highpoint HPT370A chips (such as the Adaptec 1200A) for a while now with no problems.

The Adaptec 2400A which supports IDE RAID 5 has linux drivers that will enable it to run on ESSG 4.1.2 (which is based on kernel 2.2.16). Charlie Brady's contrib directory has drivers for SME 5.1.2 but there were unconfirmed reports that they don't work correctly (did not have a card to try so could not verify one way or the other at this stage).

Kelvin

[Rob]

For raid 1use something like the MRS solutions. Acusys do similar stuff.

http://myezserver.com/mrs-raid.html

This is Darrel Mays website. You can do the whole hotswap raid 1 thing or, at the bottom of the page, the stripped down versions.

more detail at http://www.mrseries.com.tw/ideraid.htm

[Dan Brown]

The 3Ware RAID controllers are supported out of the box, and by all accounts provide excellent performance.  Probably worth a look.

[Andy MacDonald]

Thank you, Gentlemen.
This gives me something to think about. Basically, the story is that my faithful e-server which runs on a Vectra XU 200 with twin 512k Cache Pentium Pro 200's is starting to page to disk. It runs 128meg of memory. I can't afford to put more  into it, as it is the evil 168 pin ECC EDO stuff, and my obsession with loading my server up with neat stuff has made me consider building a new one.
Twin 20gig IDE drives is the main design goal unless the sweet spot is 40gig pricewise. I'd love to use a motherboard which will do the raid internally, but I've not heard pleasing things about compatibility with the e-smith kernel (or linux in general) with these integrated solutions.
Now I'll ask for your opinions. If I shove a gig of ECC memory into this new toy, and run a processor of a gigahertz or more into it, should I even bother with hardware raid?
Is software raid that much of a performance hit with faster processors?
Thanks for any suggestions.

[Mark Baker]

What is the refresh on that RAM?  If it is 4k like the Compaq ProLiants, I can give you some RAM for it.

[Tom Keiser]

Dan Brown wrote:
>
> The 3Ware RAID controllers are supported out of the box, and
> by all accounts provide excellent performance.  Probably
> worth a look.

I (sort of) like the 3ware controllers, but they *DO NOT* work with SME out of the box, if you want to use their current bios, drivers and 3dm remote-browser-manager software -- you have to compile it for your particular SME kernel.

I recently almost lost an account because of the 3ware 7410 controller (replaced by a 7210) which would go into trouble mode as often as several times a day. 3ware's technical support was absolutely useless, and finally wouldn't even return my calls.

I ended up using an MRS subraid (www.myezserver.com) and that stopped all the nonsense. There's no remote monitoring / control capability, and you have hdparm to worry about, but that beats the world record for instability and inattention to customer service.

I would still consider the 3ware stuff if it ever becomes available in binaries for an SME-supported kernel though. I do like their basic design (faster than any other raid 1) and their 7450 and 7850 cards offer very fast raid 5 for ide drives.

Regards,

Tom

[Sean Gray]

I compiled drivers for the Promise card and it was an ordeal and a half, but it can be done.

sgherculito wrote:
>
> Hi Andy,
>
> I have contacted promise technology for drivers for the
> fasttrack family of IDE RAID, they have no plans for
> supporting e-smith in the near future and no plans of
> releasing the source code.
> They do however have another IDE RAID (hardware engine) card
> with drivers
> (source code)  SuperTrak SX6000.( six channels, RAID 5)
>
> Hope this helps,
>
> Herc