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 5/8/2016 6:10 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:> Can we leave this thread just to thoughts I > solicited about which of hardware RAID card manufacturers will still > exists in close future.predicting the future? yeah, well. there are really only two choices today, Adaptec and Avago (formerly LSI, they also control the former Areca product line). I've not been very happy with the level of support Avago is offeriong for older products, and I've *never* liked Adaptec. Whoops, Avago is now Broadcom, a company I like even less for broken closed source firmware and total lack of hardware documentation. There's a pile of 2nd tier players like Promise, and so forth, I won't touch these with a 10 foot pole. -- john r pierce, recycling bits in santa cruz
On Sun, May 8, 2016 8:20 pm, John R Pierce wrote:> On 5/8/2016 6:10 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote: >> Can we leave this thread just to thoughts I >> solicited about which of hardware RAID card manufacturers will still >> exists in close future. > > > predicting the future? yeah, well. > > > there are really only two choices today, Adaptec and Avago (formerly > LSI, they also control the former Areca product line). I've not been > very happy with the level of support Avago is offeriong for older > products, and I've *never* liked Adaptec. Whoops, Avago is now Broadcom, > a company I like even less for broken closed source firmware and total > lack of hardware documentation. > > There's a pile of 2nd tier players like Promise, and so forth, I won't > touch these with a 10 foot pole. >John, thanks for your insights! I could not even imagine that my feelings would be the same about virtually everything... (and this pessimism prompted me to ask others, but I still hope to hear something optimistic). Anybody else, anything..? Valeri ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
On 05/08/2016 06:20 PM, John R Pierce wrote:> there are really only two choices today, Adaptec and Avago (formerly > LSI, they also control the former Areca product line).I don't believe that is correct. LSI acquired 3ware, and Avago acquired LSI. So, Avago owns the 3ware and LSI technology, but Adaptec and Areca are still competitors.> Whoops, Avago is now Broadcom, a company I like even less for broken > closed source firmware and total lack of hardware documentation.If it makes you feel any better, Avago acquired Broadcom, not the other way around. I would expect Avago's culture to be the dominant one, and watch for changes in Broadcom's firmware and documentation practices.