On Fri, 7 Feb 2003, Andreas Pflug wrote:
> Actually, I don't trust software RAID. If I'm talking about RAID, I
> mean mature RAID solutions, using SCSI or similar professional
> equipment.
Funny you should mention that. A buddy running a "professional" level
card had it mark two out of three drives in a RAID 5 bad and wouldn't let
him reinsert the drives no matter what. Had to revert to backups.
I'll take Linux's built in kernel raid any day over most pro cards. I've
been using it in production for about 3 years and it is very mature and
stable, and lets you do what you want to do (which can be good if your
smart, but very bad if you do something dumb... :-)
I've had good and bad experiences with pro grade RAID boxes and
controllers, but I've honestly had nothing but good from linux's kernel
level raid. Some early 2.0 stuff had some squirreliness that meant I had
to actually reboot for some changes to take affect. Since the 2.2 kernel
came out the md driver has been rock solid. I've not played with the
volume manager yet, but I hear equally nice things about it.
Keep in mind that a "hardware raid card" is nothing more than software
raid burnt into ROM and stuffed on a dedicated card, there's no magic
pixie dust that decrees doing such makes it a better or more reliable
solution.