Steve Snyder wrote:
On Wednesday 19 March 2008 2:53:53 pm Chris Snook wrote:
Steve Snyder wrote:
I'm thinking of using the embedded Adaptec SATA HostRAID
functionality on my Supermicro X7DWA-N motherboard.
Does anyone have any experience using Adaptec's HostRAID with Fedora
7/8/9? Any success or horror stories to relate?
Any information would be appreciated.
HostRAID is just software RAID implemented in a device driver. It was
originally intended for use with operating systems that lack a generic
software RAID implementation. Since Linux has a robust and
well-optimized generic software RAID implementation (two of them,
actually), it's rather silly to use HostRAID under Linux.
Thanks for the info, Chris.
I'm a total RAID newbie and thought that the HostRAID BIOS support and
Linux device driver worked together, rather than being redundant.
That's not entirely false. Recent device mapper will attempt to detect a
HostRAID configuration and emulate it with dm-raid, but this isn't foolproof,
and offers no benefit over simply configuring dm-raid directly. If you want to
use mdadm for software RAID, you should definitely disable HostRAID entirely, as
it will only cause problems.
Before you ask, I have no recommendations regarding dm-raid vs. mdadm. Both
generally work fine. dm-raid is newer and shinier, while mdadm is more
established and better documented.
-- Chris
