Well, we have a contract for this system and got hit by the recent hard drive price increase, so we don't have any more $ to spend on an additional box (and it wasn't my sale or I might have pitched a FreeNAS box). Plus we have mucho surplus redundant power in this box. Surely RAID support under Server 2008 is way better than running a [I think] non raided NT drive that has been running for years now?<div>
<br></div><div>Now as I understand it, all the BIOS options are "fake RAID" and I fully appreciate the potential for problems with a [bootable] hardware RAID. I always recommend that my customers have a separate mirrored boot drive and NOT boot from the storage array. I suppose the same sort of problem could result from booting from the fake RAID. The next question is, if it is so bad/unreliable, WHY do the BIOSes support the fake RAID in the first place? Especially now that we have 3TB and soon will have 4TB hard drives--that pretty much does away with the need for RAID for capacity needs for most folks, though there is still a demand for striping for faster data access.<br>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 2:28 PM, Michael B. Trausch <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mike@trausch.us">mike@trausch.us</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div class="im">On 11/16/2011 02:12 PM, Greg Clifton wrote:<br>
> More details this is a new server (Single Proc Xeon X3440) with only 10<br>
> users, so it won't be heavily taxed. Moving the storage to a different<br>
> Linux box really isn't an option either. We're replacing an OLD server<br>
> running NT with the 2008 server.<br>
<br>
</div>Depending on the reason why it "isn't an option", it might be worth<br>
pushing back on. The whole point of separating it out is because<br>
Windows server sucks, even with only 10 users on it. The way it<br>
operates sucks, the way it treats things on the disks sucks, the overall<br>
speed of data access sucks. Keep a single disk in the Windows server<br>
(maybe mirrored) that is the system disk, and put everything else<br>
somewhere else. Don't want a Linux box, then get a RAID array box that<br>
hooks up to the Windows box with a single eSATA connection and call it a<br>
day. That is better than having Windows sort it out.<br>
<div class="im"><br>
> What you are saying is that SOFTWARE is "more better" in all cases than<br>
> the BIOS based RAID configuration. OK, but does Server 2008 support RAID<br>
> 10? If not, we must rely on the BIOS RAID.<br>
<br>
</div>And you do NOT want to rely on BIOS RAID. At all, period, never. Bad<br>
idea, bad call. I have seen *many* BIOS RAID setups fail for a wide<br>
variety of reasons, but most of the time it seems to me that it is<br>
because some component of the implementation of them is buggy. It<br>
happens frequently enough that I wouldn't trust hourly snapshotted data<br>
on such a storage mechanism, I'll say that much.<br>
<div class="im"><br>
> If we must do that then the question falls back to which is the better<br>
> RAID option [under Windows].<br>
> I saw something on some RAID forum that said the Adaptec was for Linux<br>
> OS and the Intel for MS OS. Since Adaptec drivers are built into Linux,<br>
> that at least makes some sense.<br>
<br>
</div>Adaptec has drivers for Windows as well.<br>
<br>
The thing is that with hardware RAID it doesn't matter: you cannot<br>
upgrade, you are not portable. It is a dangerous option.<br>
<br>
Consider this: what happens if your disk controller fails? If that<br>
disk controller does RAID, and it has been discontinued, you may be<br>
looking at a whole RAID rebuild instead of just a hardware swap-out. In<br>
other words, with hardware RAID, it's far more likely that an outage is<br>
going to last forever because you'll have to start over and rebuild the<br>
array, restoring data to it.<br>
<br>
If the thing that fails is a box running Linux with four disks in it,<br>
you replace the box and move the disks over and you're done. If you<br>
have a spare box on hand, you can be up in ten minutes.<br>
<br>
If you *are* going to go the hardware RAID route, make sure you have a<br>
spare, identical controller in stock in case of failure. I've seen it<br>
happen where RAID controllers were incompatible after seemingly minor<br>
changes (device F00e vs. F00f might be two completely different things,<br>
same for F00e and F00e+) to the model number.<br>
<br>
And just don't use fakeraid (that is, BIOS provided RAID). It is simply<br>
not a viable option if you like uptime and robustness.<br>
<br>
--- Mike<br>
<br>
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