[K12OSN] Linux "Software RAID"

[Dan Young]

On Fri, Aug 8, 2008 at 4:37 AM, Rob Owens <rob.owens at biochemfluidics.com> wrote:
> I realize the ease-of-use advantage of hardware RAID, but I really was
> talking about the performance hit only.
>
> Realistically, a hardware RAID costs about $300, and that could buy me a 2nd
> 4-core processor.  I have to believe that a modern 4-core processor is way
> more capable of handling a RAID rebuild than whatever chip is onboard a
> hardware RAID controller.  Of course, I haven't done any testing...

If you have a md on Linux running somewhere, try "dmesg | grep raid".
You'll see that the kernel tests several checksum algorithms, some
using SIMD ISA extensions:

raid5: automatically using best checksumming function: pIII_sse
   pIII_sse  :  2604.000 MB/sec
raid5: using function: pIII_sse (2604.000 MB/sec)
raid6: int32x1    312 MB/s
raid6: int32x2    375 MB/s
raid6: int32x4    351 MB/s
raid6: int32x8    339 MB/s
raid6: mmxx1     1023 MB/s
raid6: mmxx2     1238 MB/s
raid6: sse1x1     921 MB/s
raid6: sse1x2    1261 MB/s
raid6: using algorithm sse1x2 (1261 MB/s)

--
Dan Young <dyoung at mesd.k12.or.us>
Multnomah ESD - Technology Services
503-257-1562