SuperMicro 5013

[Edward Dekkers]

> 
> I know this problem is specific to Raining Data's app but suggestions 
> from this group on how to protect the RAW partition since I can't use 
> the Intel software RAID would be welcome.
> Last question though, why is the Intel RAID for Serial ATA which appears 
> during POST considered software RAID?  I would think this to be hardware 
> RAID.
> 
> 

Not...really...

Think PCI WinModems.

Although the modem is a piece of hardware you stick into your PCI 
socket, really all the hardware does is simply digital to analogue 
conversion.

This is not enough to make the PCI card behave like a modem. To do that, 
the "brains" (and I say that VERY lightly) who came up with the idea of 
WinModems used the driver for Windows as the brains behind the card. All 
the stuff that for years was implemented in external serial modems (and 
some internal ISA cards that actually created a RAW comm. port) in 
hardware, had now been taken over by the software.

Reasons for this are of course cost - the WinModems cost less than half 
usually of TRUE hardware modems. The "Firmware" never needs updating. 
When you update the driver, you're auto magically updating the firmware. 
Today's processors are fast enough to perform all these things in 
software without taking a real performance hit.

This is also the reasons why it took so long for WinModems to work under 
Linux. There was no software. Previous modems did not need it, and now 
they did.

Intel RAID - same thing. The "hardware" chipset on the board really is 
just the bare minimum to get the drives to announce themselves like 
mirrored or striped sets. The rest is all done in software.

Now, I DO know, being a GID that there ARE Linux drivers for RAID. So 
you CAN get it working, however as most people here will tell you, it 
will be better for Linux to handle RAID in this case independent of the 
Intel RAID. I would tend to agree at this point.

That's it in a nutshell.

As far as Pick, I don't know a hell of a lot about it. I have one 
customer here in Australia only that runs it, and I CANNOT get them to 
switch. I'm sure what Pick does can be done as well with an SQL server, 
and would certainly prefer it, as it would be far easier to administrate 
from a Linux perspective.

As far as the RAW format.

Theory says it shouldn't matter how the partition is formatted (or not). 
The RAID should work regardless as it sits "beneath" partitions and file 
systems. i.e. it is at a lower level.

However, having no experience with running Pick this way, you really 
shouldn't take my word as gospel.

Regards,
Ed.
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