pci-e hardware raid controller

[vu pham]

On Tue, 2007-06-05 at 14:50 -0500, Net Llama! wrote:
> On Tue, 5 Jun 2007, Vu Pham wrote:
> > On Tue, 2007-06-05 at 10:06 -0500, C M Reinehr wrote:
> >> On Tuesday 05 June 2007 08:50, Vu Pham wrote:
> >>> I am looking for a sata pci-e *hardware* raid controller for Linux
> >>> ( Suse 10.2 ). I mean the one that the Linux OS can see the whole raid
> >>> system as one physical drive.
> >>>
> >>> This one will be use as a raid-0 with 4 SATA drives.
> >>>
> >>> Any recommendation ?
> >>>
> >>> Thanks,
> >>>
> >>> Vu
> >>
> >> Generally, when someone asks for help with a problem or information on a
> >> product, I dislike receiving replies suggesting a different product. But, now
> >> I'm going to do it. Why would you want to spend money to buy and additional
> >> single point of failure, when you could accomplish the same thing for free
> >> with LVM2 (logical volume management)?
> >>
> >> (Sorry, but I just couldn't help myself.)
> >>
> >
> > No problem, all advice ( and critics ) are welcome :)
> >
> > There are two reasons:
> >
> > 1. this is a test system for coding and I would like to have the highest
> > disk access performance as much as possible, and I think the hardware
> > raid is faster than software raid. Or is the gain so small to afford a
> > hardware raid ?
> 
> SW RAID is generally as fast as the controller its sitting on.  You 
> shouldn't assume that HW RAID is faster than SW RAID.  Also, most people 
> looking to use RAID solutions aren't doing it for better performance.
> 

I think raid 0 boosts the disk performance pretty well. I had two
workstations each had a single scsi disk. After I add 3 more hdds onto
each workstation and use raid-0, I can see all the apps are loaded much
faster. 

Raid 0 has more possibility of disk failure so I backup my two
workstations everyday. 

I am going to try the LVM. If the performance gain is good enough then I
do not have to use the hardware raid and can  get more memory for my
wks :)

Vu