ATA RAID with Promise FatTrack (WAS: Re: [Techtalk] Hello - intro)

Carla Schroder carla at bratgrrl.com
Sun Feb 16 09:50:47 EST 2003


On Saturday 15 February 2003 09:02 pm, Jessica Smith wrote:
> updates/bug-fixes, etc.). I'd rather do ATA RAID as supported by the RH
> driver instead.
>
> The RAID native to the Promise controller is described in the ATA RAID
> HOWTO as "fake Hardware RAID... ...using SCSI Emulation", and I'd rather
> get rid of the CPU overhead that this apparently incurs. But I do
> appreciate the suggestion.  :-)

Well, Linux software RAID is also fake using SCSI emulation. Linux uses lots 
of SCSI emulation for various devices.

The best resources I know are here:

http://www.tldp.org/FAQ/Linux-RAID-FAQ/
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-7.3-Manual/custom-guide/ch-raid-intro.html
http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-RAID-HOWTO.html

Linux software RAID is quite good, fast and reliable. The Promise controllers 
are fine, too, several of my customers use them. The drawback is a lack of 
monitoring and alerts, you have to see BIOS messages to know what's going on. 
Which is probably OK for winderz machines, as they get rebooted a lot. ;-)

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Carla Schroder
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