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Legacy Forums => General Discussion (Legacy) => Topic started by: ben2church on September 26, 2005, 08:00:24 AM

Title: Does single hard drive option = hardware mirroring?
Post by: ben2church on September 26, 2005, 08:00:24 AM
I have two identical Ultra160 HDs connected to an Adaptec 39160 SCSI controller.  I have installed version 6.0.1 and just want to make sure that the controller has indeed put the HDs in hardware mirroring RAID using the single hard drive configuration option.  I don't have to actually somehow tell the controller (through some sort of programming) to mirror the HDs, right?  The 39160 will do it automatically, right?

I am fairly sure this is right, but wanted to check to be sure.  Any help would be great.

Thanks!
Title: Does single hard drive option = hardware mirroring?
Post by: dmac on September 26, 2005, 02:43:24 PM
Not sure what type of hardware you are using, but on my Dell Poweredge server, there is an option to configure the raid controller when you boot up.  This is part of the Self tests and should give you ar pormpt like "Press CTRL - A to configure RAID", or something like that.  
If you are using the Raid card to control the read/ write to the drives, then you will install the SME server onto a single hard drive and the controller will handle the rest.

THT

Darin
Title: Re: Does single hard drive option = hardware mirroring?
Post by: NickR on September 26, 2005, 04:24:19 PM
Quote from: "ben2church"
I have two identical Ultra160 HDs connected to an Adaptec 39160 SCSI controller.  I have installed version 6.0.1 and just want to make sure that the controller has indeed put the HDs in hardware mirroring RAID using the single hard drive configuration option.  I don't have to actually somehow tell the controller (through some sort of programming) to mirror the HDs, right?  The 39160 will do it automatically, right?

I am fairly sure this is right, but wanted to check to be sure.  Any help would be great.


Sorry, but you're wrong.

The 39160 isn't a RAID controller!  It's just a 64bit dual channel SCSI card - see here: http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/product/proddetail.html?prodkey=ASC-39160&cat=%2FTechnology%2FSCSI%2FSCSI+for+Servers

I use these cards myself & I've always been very happy with the performance of the built-in software RAID of the SME.  Hardware raid doesn't buy you much extra performance if it's just doing mirroring.  You will obviously need to select software RAID-1 during the install to make this work.
Title: Re: Does single hard drive option = hardware mirroring?
Post by: ben2church on September 26, 2005, 06:23:37 PM
Rats!  Well, at least I know and will use the software mirroring option.  Didn't really think of that in buying the 39160.  No problem though.  Thanks very much for your help!

Ben