Re: Sun may have Solaris for Itanium already ready

From: Zak (Zak_at_spam.invalid)
Date: 10/30/03 

Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 20:32:51 +0100

Steven Hill wrote:

> I have seen hellish performance from Linux for disk writes to a RAID
> array, mainly because it is ***. The linux drivers for the array hardware
> were written in such a way as it worked, but to hell with the performace.
> And quite frankly, that is not the way to do business.

True - it seems that the most common controllers (Adaptec, older
SymbiosNCR) get good performance. Hardware RAIDs are indeed out;
complaints to hardware vendors are met with 'that is not right' until
they start measuring and confirm the bad figures.

Luckily, the software RAID in Linux is good - much better performing
than say Disksuite on Sun. Well, they have the 'resync problem' where
everything hgets resynced after unclean shutdowns - but performance and
data protection are fine.

FWIW I run servers with quite heavy I/O and a load of up to 30 or 40 on
Linux software RAID. It could be better, and not everything is as stable
as could be - but then other systems have their share of problems too in
this situation.

And if you need HW RAID for data protection, I'm sure you are looking at
external controllers anyway, not JBOD boxes or internal drives.

Thomas

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