On Nov 24, 2009, at 9:23 AM, Matthew Wakeling wrote:
We're about to purchase a new server to store some of our old databases, and I was wondering if someone could advise me on a RAID card. We want to make a 6-drive SATA RAID array out of 2TB drives, and it will be RAID 5 or 6 because there will be zero write traffic. The priority is stuffing as much storage into a small 2U rack as possible, with performance less important. We will be running Debian Linux.
People have mentioned Areca as making good RAID controllers. We're looking at the "Areca ARC-1220 PCI-Express x8 SATA II" as a possibility. Does anyone have an opinion on whether it is a turkey or a star?
We've used that card and have been quite happy with it. Looking through the release notes for firmware upgrades can be pretty worrying ("you needed to fix what?!"), but we never experienced any problems ourselves, and its not like 3ware release notes are any different.
But the main benefits of a RAID card are a write cache and easy hot swap. It sounds like you don't need a write cache. Can you be happy with the kernel's hotswap ability?