Fedora SMP dual core, dual AMD 64 processor system

[Bill Broadley]

On Fri, Aug 19, 2005 at 12:44:17AM -0500, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-08-18 at 22:14 -0700, Bill Broadley wrote:
> > Er, umm, you mean besides lsi-logic,
> 
> The $600 LSI Logic MegaRAID 320-2E, yes, that's the only one.

How about:
SIIG http://www.siig.com/product.asp?catid=14&pid=1003
Promise: http://www.promise.com/product/product_detail_eng.asp?segment=RAID%205%20HBAs&product_id=156
Tekram: http://www.pc-pitstop.com/sata_raid_controllers/arc1260.asp
Intel: http://www.intel.com/design/servers/RAID/srcu42e/index.htm

> Or do you mean "dumb ATA channels with a 16-bit
> only BIOS" (and 100% driver RAID) aka what I call "FRAID" (fake RAID)?

Er, I've no idea what you are describing?  You are having some strange
problems with 16-bit BIOS with pci-express cards?  This is relevent
to building a 64 bit fileserver how?  Your claiming the cards I'm
mentioning don't work? 

> FRAID is not feasible with Linux, it never will be.  It's better to use
> the "dumb ATA" channels with MD/LVM.  But I'd much rather have an
> intelligent, hardware RAID solution.

Why?  What is wrong with MD?  It performs better than the hardware RAID
controllers I've tried, provides a standard interface, and actually
allows me to migrate RAIDs between different machines and controllers
in face of failure.  I also like adding a single line to the crontab
and I get email whenever the RAID changes state.  

> > intel,
> 
> Product?  Or do you mean the IOP332 XScale microcontroller in use by the
> LSI Logic card?  Or another product?

URL above.

> >  SIIG,
> 
> Let me guess, High Point Technologies (HPT) or Silicon Image "FRAID"?

SI, so?

> > megaraid,
> 
> That's LSI Logic.  Don't reuse the product as a vendor.

My fault, I had so many hits I was pulling stuff out of the summary
in the search results.

> > tekram,
> 
> Product?  Or HPT/SilImage FRAID?

IOP332, url above.  There's a whole family of controllers from 4 to 24 ports,
optional memory upgrades and battery modules for memory backup.

> Products?  I've seen a _lot_ of "dumb ATA" channels that do FRAID.
> Nothing intelligent.

What is wrong with the IOP331, 332, and 333 family and the host of
controllers based on it?

> > You might want to check some obscure places like buy.com, amazon.com, or
> > newegg.com
> 
> Everything I've seen is FRAID -- "dumb ATA" with 0 intelligence on-
> board.  I would be interested if you've found something else though.

See above.

> > Er, there are plenty of cheap solutions out there, there are pci-e sata
> > cards starting at $80 ish with the silicon image chipset on it.
> 
> FRAID.  That's _not_ hardware RAID.

I don't recall the discussion being about hardware RAID, just RAID. 
Are there some hardware RAID advantages I'm not aware of?

> Yes, and use software RAID.  I want intelligent, hardware RAID.
> I've got *1* product choice, the LSI Logic MegaRAID 320-2E.

Or the ones mentioned above, I didn't both to list all in each family,
I found 2,4,8,12,16 and 24 port versions.

> I want intelligent, hardware RAID in PCIe.  I know only 1 product.
> If you know more, please tell me.  But don't tell me about FRAID.

Your choice, see above.  For smart controllers intel, promise, tekram,
and lsi seem to offer fine cards for building a pci-e based server for.
Wasn't that the whole point?

> > Yeah, definitely although many of the hardware raid cards can't manage
> > faster than legacy PCI bandwidth anyways.
> 
> Then you've never used a 3Ware Escalade 7000/8000 64-bit ASIC product or
> an LSI Logic MegaRAID "X" series Intel XScale microcontroller product.

Please post RAID-5 numbers using a 7000/8000 controller showing greater
than 130 MB/sec bandwidth. 

> Besides, pushing _all_ I/O over a _single_, _shared_, _legacy_ was _not_
> viable back in 2000, let alone now (5 years later).

Prove it, please post numbers.  You claim that it's often the I/O bus
that is the bottleneck, I claim with hardware raid it's usually the
hardware RAID controller itself that is the issue.  I'm open to counter
examples.  I'd suggest bonnie++ or iozone if you want a benchmark to
measure bandwidth.

> I used to specialize in ripping out i440BX/GX chipset mainboards and
> putting in ServerWorks ServerSet IIILE and IIIHE chipset mainboards for
> $500-750 and companies would instantly see 3x the performance with their
> _existing_ RAID controllers and GbE cards.  And that was circa 2000.

Sure, and I've seen 3x improvement ditching multi $k hardware raid
controllers and using software raid on a cheap controller.  In fact when
Dell was pushed as to why they couldn't manage the write to a 50MB/sec
specification on a rather expensive disk array they admitted they used
software RAID internally.  To meet the spec they refunded the price of
the expensive hardware RAID controller and replaced it with a "FRAID".

I'm open to using (and paying for) hardware RAID if it gave me more
performance in exchange for learning the custom command line, web
interface, serial interface, java interface, BIOS interface, or even the
occasional windows only client that is required to configure, reconfigure,
and/or monitor the RAID.  In my experience this hasn't been the case,
I'm more to open to counter examples though.

-- 
Bill Broadley
Computational Science and Engineering
UC Davis