classiccmp server hardware

From: Jay West <jwest_at_classiccmp.org>
Date: Sun Oct 10 13:29:49 2004

It was written....
> I haven't seen any Promise chip that does hardware RAID. I have a
> simple rule of thumb - if I define a LUN in the RAID BIOS and my OS sees
> the physical member disks, it ain't RAID. All the Promise models we've
> tested or I've heard feedback on do exactly what Jochen says.
Interesting. I haven't used a promise card in a long time... but I thought I
recalled the OS (FreeBSD) only seeing the logical drives, not the physical
ones. I could well be wrong. Looks like 3ware two drive raid 0,1 controllers
can be had for $115. Add to that a $60 some odd cost for another 160gb
drive, and we should be cool.

> I would agree with you if the server was a SPARCstation5 or something.
> As you said yourself, we've got cycles to burn here.
Just because you CAN do a thing, doesn't mean you should. I view cpu cycles
as precious and not to be used frivolously even when available in good
supply. Perhaps it dates back to my mentality of pouring over machine code
to save a cycle here and there :)

> The last time I logged into that box it had over 600 days uptime, and we
> have several production machines of our own running RAID1 in software.
I wasn't saying it wasn't reliable, just not the best use of the main cpu.
I'd also lay odds that it isn't as fast.

Thanks for the input Doc!!

Jay West
Received on Sun Oct 10 2004 - 13:29:49 BST