I have been looking around at motherboards and noticed that a number of them are offering an Intel chip set that include several raid mode on sata drives. My particular interest is raid 5. It isn’t really clear if this is a sofware or hardware raid. When I initially started using OpenSuse it supported both types but later dropped the soft variety. I wonder what the current situation is? I noticed that even some low end HP servers that seem to be using soft raid even with SAS drives. Boards for the i7 and xenon processor have this raid built in.My current set up is a 3 scsci disc raid 5 via a PCI-X slot on the motherboard. PCI-X slotted motherboards seemed to have dissapeared from the market place so retaining that looks to be difficult especially here in the UK.John-
On 2013-06-08 18:06, John 82 wrote:
>
> I have been looking around at motherboards and noticed that a number of
> them are offering an Intel chip set that include several raid mode on
> sata drives. My particular interest is raid 5. It isn’t really clear if
> this is a sofware or hardware raid.
Probably fake raid.
> I noticed that even some low end
> HP servers that seem to be using soft raid even with SAS drives.
Processors are so powerful nowdays that the overhead of software raid is
hardly noticed.
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Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)
Not much help Saludos. I need to know if they will work with OpenSuse.
Looking at a Dell server they list linux for models with hardware raid but state windows only for the soft ones.
One particular model comes with hardware raid but it’s extremely difficult to find out what can go in the box apart from the 3 sas discs that come with it:
At such an amazing prices it’s a lot lot less than the bits would cost too.
John
On 2013-06-08 23:36, John 82 wrote:
>
> Not much help Saludos.
Er… “Saludos” is a Spanish salutation, not my name.
> I need to know if they will work with OpenSuse.
Short answer: no.
Second answer: even if it works, do not use it. Being Intel, there is a
chance that it does.
Third answer: google what fake raid means. The wikipedia is a starting
point, google this site is another. We have been talking about that this
week, so a second long explanation I’m not inclined to give 
Then find out if your machine has real hardware raid or fake raid.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)
It’s sad that linux didn’t continue to work with fake raid on cards and motheboards as it worked rather well. From the search on here there does seem to be a Linux fake raid available. I suspected that there was as the majority of NAS set ups run a modified/stripped down linux.
No use to me though as parity etc for recovery is essential. That mainly why I use raid. It’s interesting that Novel Netware did a 2 disc hot fix raid where the parity was kept in small partitions. Mirrored as well. It was also quick. The installation I used it on never had to make use of it.
John
John 82 wrote:
> I have been looking around at motherboards and noticed that a number of
> them are offering an Intel chip set that include several raid mode on
> sata drives. My particular interest is raid 5.
Why RAID 5? Are you aware of its problems with larger drives? If not,
read up.
Personally, I would ignore any motherboard RAID features. Just count the
number of connectors that are accessible and their specs when used as JBOD.
> It isn’t really clear if
> this is a sofware or hardware raid. When I initially started using
> OpenSuse it supported both types but later dropped the soft variety.
Eh? opensuse still supports as much as it ever did, AFAIK.
There are two main facilities, dmraid and mdadm. Or you can buy a true
hardware RAID adapter. I don’t know anything about dmraid, although I
understand it works pretty well. I happily use both mdadm and hardware RAID.
> I
> wonder what the current situation is? I noticed that even some low end
> HP servers that seem to be using soft raid even with SAS drives. Boards
> for the i7 and xenon processor have this raid built in.My current set up
> is a 3 scsci disc raid 5 via a PCI-X slot on the motherboard. PCI-X
> slotted motherboards seemed to have dissapeared from the market place so
> retaining that looks to be difficult especially here in the UK.John-
On 2013-06-10 11:58, Dave Howorth wrote:
> John 82 wrote:
>> It isn’t really clear if
>> this is a sofware or hardware raid. When I initially started using
>> OpenSuse it supported both types but later dropped the soft variety.
>
> Eh? opensuse still supports as much as it ever did, AFAIK.
>
> There are two main facilities, dmraid and mdadm. Or you can buy a true
> hardware RAID adapter. I don’t know anything about dmraid, although I
> understand it works pretty well. I happily use both mdadm and hardware RAID.
I read a comment that the problem is that the 12.3 installer fails to
work with fake raid. The bypass is to install 12.2 instead, then run the
upgrade to 12.3 (dvd offline method).
boot-login forum.
Re: Fake RAID install failure
From: susegebr
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Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)