On 08/05/16 08:12 PM, John R Pierce wrote:> On 5/6/2016 2:26 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote: >> Which internal hardware RAID controllers will survive some future to come >> in your estimate. First of all my beloved 3ware finally seems to have >> passed away. After multiple acquisitions and becoming part of LSI and >> getting bought with LSI, it probably became non operational. Namely, the >> latest 3ware cards have ancient firmware. Neither of them supports 4kn >> drives. This speaks for itself for me. [Under new ownership] LSI, though >> still having new controllers released, and one of their MegaRAID >> controllers (at least) having support for 4kn drives, still may not last >> long (just my feeling, I'd like to hear yours). So, what RAID controllers >> will those of us who like to have hardware RAIDs use in some future to >> come? > > > IMHO, "Hardware" (really embedded firmware) RAID is for Windows servers, > since MS Windows has awful integrated software raid (aka 'dynamic disk', > truly a mess). With Linux, I'd rather use LVM, with BSD, ZFS."Hardware RAID" can very well include a controller with dedicated parity processing, battery/flash backed write caching and other tangible benefits. -- Digimer Papers and Projects: https://alteeve.ca/w/ What if the cure for cancer is trapped in the mind of a person without access to education?
On 5/8/2016 5:31 PM, Digimer wrote:> "Hardware RAID" can very well include a controller with dedicated parity > processing, battery/flash backed write caching and other tangible benefits.Yes, battery/flash write-back cache provides some performance benefit in write intensive workloads. but all that parity processing? your x86_64 server processor is far faster than the typical few 100Mhz MIPS/ARM sort of CPU they embed on those controllers, and can easily keep up in realtime, and I'd far rather have the OS native volume manager open source managing the physical volumes than some black box firmware. -- john r pierce, recycling bits in santa cruz
On Sun, May 8, 2016 7:31 pm, Digimer wrote:> On 08/05/16 08:12 PM, John R Pierce wrote: >> On 5/6/2016 2:26 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote: >>> Which internal hardware RAID controllers will survive some future to >>> come >>> in your estimate. First of all my beloved 3ware finally seems to have >>> passed away. After multiple acquisitions and becoming part of LSI and >>> getting bought with LSI, it probably became non operational. Namely, >>> the >>> latest 3ware cards have ancient firmware. Neither of them supports 4kn >>> drives. This speaks for itself for me. [Under new ownership] LSI, >>> though >>> still having new controllers released, and one of their MegaRAID >>> controllers (at least) having support for 4kn drives, still may not >>> last >>> long (just my feeling, I'd like to hear yours). So, what RAID >>> controllers >>> will those of us who like to have hardware RAIDs use in some future to >>> come? >> >> >> IMHO, "Hardware" (really embedded firmware) RAID is for Windows servers, >> since MS Windows has awful integrated software raid (aka 'dynamic disk', >> truly a mess). With Linux, I'd rather use LVM, with BSD, ZFS. > > "Hardware RAID" can very well include a controller with dedicated parity > processing, battery/flash backed write caching and other tangible > benefits.Right, by "hardware RAID" as opposed to a bit more often used term "software RAID" I did mean the card that has RAID processing done by the chip on board of the card (parity or in other words modulus 2 sum in case of RAID-5, and more sophisticated math in case of RAID-6 - I have heard of at least two algorithms suitable for RAID-6). Thanks, Mr. Digimer, for clarifying my somewhat vague in this place post. Any insight, anybody, which hardware RAID cards of rather which manufacturers of these cards will still make them in a future (say next 5 years)? Even if you just have feelings, without any thought why, I would like to hear them. If you prefer to answer off the list, please, e-mail me directly at galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu Thanks a lot! Valeri> > -- > Digimer > Papers and Projects: https://alteeve.ca/w/ > What if the cure for cancer is trapped in the mind of a person without > access to education? > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos >++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
On Sun, May 8, 2016 7:55 pm, John R Pierce wrote:> On 5/8/2016 5:31 PM, Digimer wrote: >> "Hardware RAID" can very well include a controller with dedicated parity >> processing, battery/flash backed write caching and other tangible >> benefits. > > Yes, battery/flash write-back cache provides some performance benefit in > write intensive workloads. but all that parity processing? your > x86_64 server processor is far faster than the typical few 100Mhz > MIPS/ARM sort of CPU they embed on those controllers, and can easily > keep up in realtime, and I'd far rather have the OS native volume > manager open source managing the physical volumes than some black box > firmware. >John, if you want to have discussion of benefits of Linux software RAID vs hardware RAID cards, could you start new thread dedicated for that. That topic is interesting, and may help some folks in their decisions, and I may add some arguments/thoughts to that discussion on one of the sides, or on both. Or maybe not, as I did it already in similar discussion on this same list a year or two ago. Can we leave this thread just to thoughts I solicited about which of hardware RAID card manufacturers will still exists in close future. Thanks for your consideration. Valeri> john r pierce, recycling bits in santa cruz > > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos >++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
On 08/05/16 09:02 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:> > On Sun, May 8, 2016 7:31 pm, Digimer wrote: >> On 08/05/16 08:12 PM, John R Pierce wrote: >>> On 5/6/2016 2:26 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote: >>>> Which internal hardware RAID controllers will survive some future to >>>> come >>>> in your estimate. First of all my beloved 3ware finally seems to have >>>> passed away. After multiple acquisitions and becoming part of LSI and >>>> getting bought with LSI, it probably became non operational. Namely, >>>> the >>>> latest 3ware cards have ancient firmware. Neither of them supports 4kn >>>> drives. This speaks for itself for me. [Under new ownership] LSI, >>>> though >>>> still having new controllers released, and one of their MegaRAID >>>> controllers (at least) having support for 4kn drives, still may not >>>> last >>>> long (just my feeling, I'd like to hear yours). So, what RAID >>>> controllers >>>> will those of us who like to have hardware RAIDs use in some future to >>>> come? >>> >>> >>> IMHO, "Hardware" (really embedded firmware) RAID is for Windows servers, >>> since MS Windows has awful integrated software raid (aka 'dynamic disk', >>> truly a mess). With Linux, I'd rather use LVM, with BSD, ZFS. >> >> "Hardware RAID" can very well include a controller with dedicated parity >> processing, battery/flash backed write caching and other tangible >> benefits. > > Right, by "hardware RAID" as opposed to a bit more often used term > "software RAID" I did mean the card that has RAID processing done by the > chip on board of the card (parity or in other words modulus 2 sum in case > of RAID-5, and more sophisticated math in case of RAID-6 - I have heard of > at least two algorithms suitable for RAID-6). Thanks, Mr. Digimer, for > clarifying my somewhat vague in this place post.We're not all "Mr".> Any insight, anybody, which hardware RAID cards of rather which > manufacturers of these cards will still make them in a future (say next 5 > years)? Even if you just have feelings, without any thought why, I would > like to hear them. If you prefer to answer off the list, please, e-mail me > directly at galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu > > Thanks a lot! > > ValeriLSI brand cards are very common across enterprise (I think all tier-1 vendors, except HP, use LSI (now Avago) based controllers. Given that, I would expect their cards will be available for quite some time to come. -- Digimer Papers and Projects: https://alteeve.ca/w/ What if the cure for cancer is trapped in the mind of a person without access to education?