Marc Skinner wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > admin at lctn.org wrote: >> What is a recommended sata raid adapter, that can handle a 2Tb, raid 5 >> configuration? >> > > i have been using the 8 port Marvell sata2 MG-SA3541 in my home > fileserver. i use software raid-5 to keep the cost down, since i don't > need hardware raid performance. it was $108 for the card! works > awesome with FC6 and gives me 2.4Tb usable. > > i think the question you need to ask, is how many SATA ports do you > require. > > will it be a 3x1 TB setup or 5x500Gb setup? do you require a hot spare? > > i have also used adaptec cards, 3ware, siig, highpoint and promise > controllers over the past serveral years. all are good and have good > Linux support. It really depends on what kind of performance the original poster is looking for, the load profile, and the budget. If you need it to be FAST, go 3ware or Areca, no question about it. Good driver support. Low cpu overhead. All RAID computations are done on a dedicated chip on the pci-x or pci-e bus. Their array monitoring software(at least 3ware's) is quite good also. If you want speed but are on a budget, get regular sata controller(s) and do a kernel raid setup (mdadm). Mdadm can also do scheduled verifies, email on degradation, etc. This is the route I went for my home file-server needs. Just note that your /boot cannot be on a raid0 or 5 partition as most bootloaders don't understand linux kernel raid. You can do it on a raid1 though (mirror). If you want average performance and more headache in linux, get a cheap raid5 controller. They do operations in a slower software driver using your cpu. MDADM is often faster, and is not very complicated to set-up once familiar with it. DMRAID (which is what you use in linux if you use a driver-based raid controller) sometimes can be a pain for people to set up. -Dean