Re: hardware raid1 onboard

From: Scott Howard (scott_at_hunterlink.net.au)
Date: 12/27/03 

Date: 27 Dec 2003 13:24:38 GMT

Bastiaan Spandaw <newsgroupaddy15@becobaf.com> wrote:
> I need a redundant solaris ultrasparc server
>
> minimal config:
>
> - single 600Mhz III or dual 360Mhz ultrasparc IIi or higher

If it's a single CPU, then it's not redundant...

[...]
> The best answer would be "Sure the fire V240 can handle onboard HW RAID-1"

"Sure the Sun Fire V440 can handle onboard HW RAID-1"

That said, Software RAID (in the way it's implemented in Sun machines) is
generally better than hardware RAID. Most all hardware RAID of the type
you'd have for bootdisks is going to result in your RAID-1 device being
presented to the host as a single disk on a single controller. If your
controller dies, your machine is dead.

Running Software RAID-1 with disks on two different controllers is far more
redundant than any HW RAID boot setups I can think of for a Sun without
going to much higher end gear (T3/3x10 as a boot device).

Anyone demanding hardware RAID for bootdisks is most likely coming from a
PC background, where the loss of the primary disk in a mirror means that you
can't boot the machine - this isn't the case with Sun boxes, as the machine
can be setup to boot from either disk if the other dies.

  Scott.

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