Hardware RAID Level & Performance

[Andrew Morgan]

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005, Aleksandar Milivojevic wrote:

> Norman Zhang wrote:
>> May I ask has anyone consider SATA RAID yet? I seems to be a very 
>> inexpensive solution.
>
> All is not dark.  There are several companies making real hardware RAID 
> solutions that use SATA disks.  3ware is one of them and seems to be very 
> well supported and popular in Linux community.  Device drivers are part of 
> official Linux kernel.  Adaptec has some real SATA hardware RAID controlers. 
> Device drivers for some of them are part of official Linux kernel, for others 
> can be downloaded from Adaptec web site.  So if you want hardware RAID 
> solution based on SATA disks, that is the only way to go currently.  If 
> buying Adaptec, be carefull.  The cheap SATA RAID card they sell is software 
> RAID.  You need to buy one of the more expensive ones to get hardware RAID.

You may want to look into Dell's AX100 SAN (a rebranded version of the EMC 
Clariion AX100).  These use SATA drives with a FC front end.  They are 
relatively inexpensive for the amount of storage you can get, if your I/O 
needs match.  You can also go a little more upscale with the CX300/500/700 
models which support a mix of FC and SATA hard drives and offer greater 
expandability.

Whether these solutions are appropriate for storing mail is left as an 
exercise for the reader...   :)

 	Andy
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