[ale] Linux support for Intel Matrix Storage Manager?

[Chris Woodfield]

Hi,

I've been shopping hardware to upgrade my five-year-old Pentium II-based 
homebrew server to something to last me another five years...I'd like to 
make this box as buzzword-compliant as reasonable - dual-core cpu, SATA, 
RAID, etc. One mobo I'm looking at is the Abit AW8, which supports the 
Intel Matrix Storage Manager - a software RAID driver built into the ICH7R 
I/O controller.

>From what I can tell, this RAID driver is supported by the libata driver 
in 2.6 kernels. I've also been reading up on Linux's native software RAID 
features, which some sites strongly suggest using instead of any 
controller's "fakeraid" feature.

So, two questions:

1. What's the current status of hardware-enabled "fakeraid" 
implementations like Intel's vs. the kernel's software RAID? Which would be 
preferred for implementation?

2. Is it common practice to put the root partition on the RAID along with 
the other partitions, or to use a regular drive separate from the RAID for 
this?

...and going somewhat OT:

3. I've seen SATA drive bracket adapters that will fit three internal 
drives into a double-height space (i.e. two 5 1/4 drive bays). Does there 
exist a beast that will fit four drives into three bays? And if so, is there 
one that supports hot-swap?

4. Are there other motherboards out there that folks would like to 
recommend? The must-have features are Pentium D support, four or more SATA 
connectors, and Gigabit Ethernet. Nice-to-have features would be an 
on-board VGA for in-front-of-the-rack management or serial port for OOB 
console (I can buy a cheap video card or a USB serial adapter if 
necessary, but I'd rather not). 

TIA,

-Chris