From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S263304AbTJUVqp (ORCPT ); Tue, 21 Oct 2003 17:46:45 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S263307AbTJUVqp (ORCPT ); Tue, 21 Oct 2003 17:46:45 -0400 Received: from tmr-02.dsl.thebiz.net ([216.238.38.204]:35076 "EHLO gatekeeper.tmr.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S263304AbTJUVql (ORCPT ); Tue, 21 Oct 2003 17:46:41 -0400 To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Path: gatekeeper.tmr.com!davidsen From: davidsen@tmr.com (bill davidsen) Newsgroups: mail.linux-kernel Subject: Re: Software RAID5 with 2.6.0-test Date: 21 Oct 2003 21:36:39 GMT Organization: TMR Associates, Schenectady NY Message-ID: References: <1065690658.10389.19.camel@slurv> X-Trace: gatekeeper.tmr.com 1066772199 19740 192.168.12.62 (21 Oct 2003 21:36:39 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@tmr.com Originator: davidsen@gatekeeper.tmr.com Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org In article , =?iso-8859-1?q?M=E5ns_Rullg=E5rd?= wrote: | Bill Davidsen writes: | | >> However, I wouln't count on superior performance from software based | >> RAID 5 (ata/fakeraid or otherwise), that is whats real raid controllers | >> are for. | > | > While an overloaded system may benefit from offloaded the CPU | > requirements of RAID, unless you go to a very expensive external unit | > the kernel RAID will usually outperform the inexpensive RAID embedded on | > a controller. The kernel simply knows more about the data needs and can | > can do things a controller can't. | | What about the RAID controllers in the $400 category? Surely, they | must be doing something better than the $50 fakeraid controllers. Unfortunately my experience is with either the cheap motherboard ones I get for free and the IBM ServRAID controllers which are kind of in the "more than that" category. The benefit of the m/b ones is that with RAID-1 you will get a boot if the boot drive fails. Period. Unlike optimal RAID-1 which will read mirrored data from any non-busy drive, the cheap ones seem to do fail-over only, and read the second drive only if the first fails, or even require both drives to be on the same cable, ensuring that the bus will be busy when either drive is busy. They do buy reliability, however, so there are places where they are very cost effective. The IBM controllers are everything you ever wanted in a controller. It supports four SCSI busses for bandwidth, all the RAID types including 5e, and it has Linux config software so you can do most reconfigures on a running system. I would choose them over anything else I've personally used, mainly Adaptec and PERC. They are really great for multi-TB storage systems. But in between is where software RAID wins. In many medium applications, the limit isn't CPU, and it isn't bus bandwidth, it's the base speed of the disk access counted as either access time or bandwidth depending on the application. So the major benefits of midprice RAID for ATAPI/SATA aren't realized, performance is the issue. It's obvious that the o/s has information which a RAID controller doesn't in terms of ordering i/o. And similarly true that adding a GB to the main system is going to help overall more than a GB on a controller (as noted, 256MB seems the limit on some), because the o/s will use it more effectively for buffers, and because it will eliminate some i/o entirely, particularly swap. And nothing speeds a disk operation more than avoiding the need to do it. Anyone who says that any one solution is best for everything is clearly misguided, but I do think that for many midsize applications that software RAID is the most cost effective solution, and vs. moderately priced controllers very likely to be the higher performance solution as well. -- bill davidsen CTO, TMR Associates, Inc Doing interesting things with little computers since 1979.