SATA RAID controller recommendations

[Smith, Albert]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: redhat-list-bounces at redhat.com 
> [mailto:redhat-list-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Gavin McDonald
> Sent: Friday, August 05, 2005 1:31 PM
> To: 'General Red Hat Linux discussion list'
> Subject: RE: SATA RAID controller recommendations
> 
> further to that, Would a separate partition for /tmp be in order?
> 
> I remember a message about two weeks ago alluding to the fact 
> that by putting /tmp on its own partition, Nagarjuna Rao 
> Cherukuri noticed an increase in performance.  Should I take 
> this as a rule, or an anecdote?
> 
> Regards,
> -G
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Burke, Thomas G. [mailto:tg.burke at ngc.com]
> Sent: Friday, August 05, 2005 10:05 AM
> To: me at gavitron.com; General Red Hat Linux discussion list
> Subject: RE: SATA RAID controller recommendations
> 
> I have no direct experience, but I have been told that it 
> took leavng an IDE in to do the installs, so the installers 
> could detect.  However, he installed to the SATA's, and set 
> them up as the boot partitions.  He claimed it worked after 
> that, but I can't recall if he left the IDE in or if he took 
> it out.  It may have amounted to using the ide strictly as a 
> boot device (and maybe swap space).  He also told me that he 
> was seeing ~25-50% disk performance improvement using the SATA's.
> 
> Sorry, that's the only intel I've got.
> 
> 	-Tom 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: redhat-list-bounces at redhat.com
> [mailto:redhat-list-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Gavin McDonald
> Sent: Friday, August 05, 2005 12:56 PM
> To: 'General Red Hat Linux discussion list'
> Subject: RE: SATA RAID controller recommendations
> 
> Just to add my 2c:
> 
> I recently tried getting RHEL to work on a dual-opteron ASUS 
> board, with dual onboard SATA hardware raid controllers. One 
> was part of the NVIDIA chipset, the other was a "Silicon 
> Image" Controller.  Long story short, I replaced the SATA 
> drives with IDE drives instead.
> 
> To start with, I couldn't boot a stable kernel off of the 
> original Red CDs (Box-Set), so I d/l the latest RHEL3 ISOs, 
> which at least booted.
> (We're a '3' shop until I can migrate _everything_ to 4...).  
> Now with a stable kernel, the Mfr-Supplied Driver disks were 
> still useless.  Not once was I able to boot to the install 
> GUI, unless I had an IDE drive attached as well.
> 
> If you can go to RHEL4, the controllers are detected, and the 
> drives appear in disk druid,  however, even with the hardware 
> BIOS setup for RAID0 or RAID1, the druid shows 2 separate drives...
> 
> So that was my tale of woe, If someone has had better 
> experiences with either controller, or perhaps notices a flaw 
> in my logic, (gasp!) please feel free to tell me so. :)  
> (This is after all, a mailing list ;)
> 
> Regards,
> -G
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: redhat-list-bounces at redhat.com
> [mailto:redhat-list-bounces at redhat.com]
> On Behalf Of Chris
> Sent: Tuesday, August 02, 2005 3:15 PM
> To: redhat-list at redhat.com
> Subject: Re: SATA RAID controller recommendations
> 
> Michael's Stationery----- Original Message -----
> From: Michael Cohn
> Sent: Tuesday, August 02, 2005 2:54 PM
> Subject: SATA RAID controller recommendations
> 
> > I just saw your post from back in November regarding SATA RAID 
> > controller recommendations.
> >
> > http://info.ccone.at/INFO/Mil-Archives/redhat/Nov-2004
> >  /msg00119.html
> >
> > What controller did you wind up using?  I just purchsaed a Dell 
> > PowerEdge 420sc with 2x80gb SATA drives and would like to add a 
> > hardware RAID controller.  My plan is to run either Fedora 3/4 or 
> > SuSe.
> 
> Michael,
> 
> By far the best SATA RAID controllers with great support for 
> Linux come from
> 
> 3WARE.  If you only have 2 drives, you can get away with their basic
> (~$120)
> 
> model which can do RAID-0 and RAID-1, the 8006-2LP.  It works 
> great!  We have everything they make from the basic 2-port 
> model all the way up to a 12-port models which run our 3TB 
> storage backup systems.
> 
> Stay away from Adaptec and Promise controllers.  Promise 
> controllers have serious issues with drivers and stability, 
> while Adaptec outright abandons brand new products and 
> doesn't provide almost any Linux support.  We had to toss 
> several dozen of their 'brand new' zero channel SCSI RAID 
> 2015S controllers because they announced that they would not 
> provide drivers for kernel 2.6 - meaning FC2 and above, RHEL 4, etc.
> They seem to be a "Windows
> 
> only" shop these days.  I know it has nothing to do with 
> SATA, but as a company in general I wouldn't buy any of their 
> products anymore, not after spending thousands on controllers 
> that we had to replace less than
> 6 months later because Adaptec decided they were going to 
> support Windows only.
> 
> Chris 
> 
> 
> --
> redhat-list mailing list
> unsubscribe mailto:redhat-list-request at redhat.com?subject=unsubscribe
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
> 
> --
> redhat-list mailing list
> unsubscribe mailto:redhat-list-request at redhat.com?subject=unsubscribe
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
> 
> --
> redhat-list mailing list
> unsubscribe mailto:redhat-list-request at redhat.com?subject=unsubscribe
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
> 
> 

It depends on if the parition is on a separate physical disk or on the
same disk. If it is on the same disk I don't think it matters if it has
it's own partition or not. I partition it out so I can put a hard limit
on the space. You will definitly get a performance boost if it has it's
own drive as activity in /tmp and /var/tmp can be at times very chatty.

Albert Smith
Sr. Unix Systems Administrator
HPCSA, RHCT
Genex Services
440 E. Swedesford Rd.
Wayne, PA 19087
albert.smith at genexservices.com
(610) 964-5154