Opinions on Adaptec SATA HostRAID?
Chris Snook
csnook at redhat.com
Wed Mar 19 21:10:19 UTC 2008
Steve Snyder wrote:
> On Wednesday 19 March 2008 2:53:53 pm Chris Snook wrote:
>> Steve Snyder wrote:
>>> I'm thinking of using the embedded Adaptec SATA HostRAID
>>> functionality on my Supermicro X7DWA-N motherboard.
>>>
>>> Does anyone have any experience using Adaptec's HostRAID with Fedora
>>> 7/8/9? Any success or horror stories to relate?
>>>
>>> Any information would be appreciated.
>> HostRAID is just software RAID implemented in a device driver. It was
>> originally intended for use with operating systems that lack a generic
>> software RAID implementation. Since Linux has a robust and
>> well-optimized generic software RAID implementation (two of them,
>> actually), it's rather silly to use HostRAID under Linux.
>
> Thanks for the info, Chris.
>
> I'm a total RAID newbie and thought that the HostRAID BIOS support and
> Linux device driver worked together, rather than being redundant.
That's not entirely false. Recent device mapper will attempt to detect a
HostRAID configuration and emulate it with dm-raid, but this isn't foolproof,
and offers no benefit over simply configuring dm-raid directly. If you want to
use mdadm for software RAID, you should definitely disable HostRAID entirely, as
it will only cause problems.
Before you ask, I have no recommendations regarding dm-raid vs. mdadm. Both
generally work fine. dm-raid is newer and shinier, while mdadm is more
established and better documented.
-- Chris
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