IDE RAID is NOT HARDWARE!

[RagingGuardian]

Those cards are so expensive I might as well go SCSI.

 

[Pariah]

First off, it certainly isn't any news that most of the IDE RAID controllers are software. This was brought to light months ago. The fact of the matter is that there are a few hardware RAID implementations on the market or just about to be released. 3Ware has been making hardware controllers for a few months now that aren't incredibly expensive. Adaptec's card is out as well, though I wouldn't recommend it. It's a SCSI RAID card with an IDE translator on it which probably kills performance. The new Promise controllers look very nice and may be something I'll look into buying. As for you Ben, the new Promise controllers do everything you listed so you just got a lot off your chest for no good reason.

"Software only RAID is not bootable"

Software RAID 1 is bootable.

"The Maxtor problem isn't a fault of the controller. Maxtor doesn't adhere to ATA specification. Their drives (to this date I'm sure) fail to allow for command queing. IBM was the first (ATA) drive manufacturer to do so and has the best compliance. Is that a coincidence that their drives work the best with IDE RAID controllers? I don't think so."

Storagereview.com has been working on an IDE RAID card roundup. Guess which hard drive they are having trouble getting to work on one of the controllers? It isn't Maxtor, it's IBM, so there goes your wonderful arguement out the window. Command Queuing is not in the ATA spec, or at least isn't a requirement, and following the ATA spec has nothing to do with incompatability with certain RAID controllers.

"Those cards are so expensive I might as well go SCSI."

The new 4 channel Promise card is available for under $300 if you look around. 30GB Quantum LM's are available for about $100. That's a 120GB array for $700, which is basically the cost of a lower end (not entry level) SCSI RAID card. Now tack on 120GB of SCSI hard drives and there is no price comparison at all.

 

[arthurb1]

Just get one of those drive cabinets that has about 30 drives, and it looks like one BIG drive

 

[Killfile]

I don't think anyone with a half-ounce of nous was under the impression that these cards were hardware based. Right?

The fact that "IDE RAID" was a small-card, one chip solution requiring no Cache RAM wheras SCSI RAID needed a small farm of chips and 64MB of cache should have given some clue, even if you take into account that SCSI is generally more complex.

 

[jonnyGURU]

My CPU utilization with a Fastrak 100 is never > 10%. Don't know how your numbers got so high. I have seen that the 10% of the Fastrak 100 is better than all of the other IDE RAID controllers. :Q

Also, IDE has a higher CPU overhead RAID or no RAID. On board or on PCI card (same thing technically), so high CPU overhead when compared to SCSI is no surprise. If it wasn't for SCSI, I couldn't play Q3A while burning a CD (1X though, of course).

Furthermore, RAID1's redundancy is a good enough reason to go RAID. I have had two WDs die in the last year and a half. I don't want to go through that again.

Also, I don't personally care about W2K's software RAID because I don't use W2K. I use 9X and Linux. W2K just didn't do it for me when it came to being "fully compatible" with all of my "needs" (games, Voodoo 3500 compatability, etc). :|

That's just me though, of course!

 

[Ben]

Ah, I see. Promise finally comes up with a descent RAID card so now I'm full of it. Even though you can't get it yet. Even though it's going to be a lot more money than your wannabe $5 FastTrack card which is what we are talking about here!

And I'm going to laugh if that new Promise card is $500.

 

[jonnyGURU]

Ben: I'm wondering who this is directed towards. I said no one is full of shìt. I merely said that Warrenton's numbers are a lot higher than mine, and Maximum PC's for that matter, and that I do not use 2000 because it does not suit my needs so comparing against a "built in" software RAID feature with me is a moot point.

A hardware RAID solution would be "neat" for IDE, but if it's not cost effective, why bother? SCSI drives don't cost "that" much.

sharkeeper:

<< Have you configured a DPT Century controller with a pair of x15's? >>

Actually, YES! and, coincidently, it's running RAID5!

 

[arthurb1]

RAID 5 is not about pure speed anyway, if you want that go with RAID 0 where that card SMOKES (I had one) RAID 5 is striping with PARITY...ie. fault tolerant, to where if a disk fails, it can be rebuilt from the rest, and you need at leas 3 disks to do it effectively.

 

[Ben]

Actually my statement was directed at Piriah. He was trying to tell me that I was full of it because Promise has a new card out now that can do all the options I mentioned.

Not really what we were discussing here.

I have a Promise FastTrack too. I've used it and abused it. For me, since I use NT/2000 it didn't do much. I could see it being somewhat useful in Win98 since there's no support for striping in '98.

Here's my point. There's a lot of people who have one of these cards who sport the &quot;IDE RAID&quot; feature as though they've somehow jumped on the RAID bandwagon for pennies on the dollar. That just isn't the case. There's a lot of marketing hype about &quot;IDE RAID&quot; too. These cards barely meet the qualifications!

I'm not trashing everyone using one. I have one too. If it works for you then good. Personally, I don't see the need and I'll be selling mine.

This started as a sore subject for me awhile back, when someone made a comment about how I had &quot;wasted my money&quot; on my SCSI RAID card because they were using a modded Promise card with two hard drives for 1/4 of the price that I paid for my setup. I started noticing that this was the general conclusion of most people on this board as well.

 

[Pariah]

The 4 channel version of the new Promise card is available at a number of vendors for under $300 (MSRP of $399) at at least one. The 6 channel will be available in a couple weeks. I'm not debating the point that the majority or IDE RAID controllers are complete junk, they are, and I wouldn't touch them, but that does no negate the fact that viable &quot;real&quot; hardware RAID controllers are being released for IDE.

&quot;I've configured RAID controllers (Promise FT33/66/100) with IBM 14,22,34,and 75 GXP drives with no problems whatsoever. I would never consider a Maxtor drive in my system since I had seventeen drives with fatal problems since 1993.&quot;

In other words, the fact that you have not had problems with IBM, makes it an undeniable truth that no one else has.

&quot;Have you configured a DPT Century controller with a pair of x15's? I have and the performance is no better (STR) than a single drive. These (higher end) controllers were designed for RAID 5 in servers where reliabilty is important.&quot;

I have no idea what that is in response to, or what point you are trying to make.

 

[jonnyGURU]

Hey Ben. Drop me a Private Message if that card is a Fastrak 100 and you want to sell it. Name your price.

I have somewhere where I could put it!

Thanks!

 

[Soccerman]

LOL!!!!

4 channel IDE card??!?!?

just go SCSI, you won't regret it (well your pocket book might but if you're going to get 4 Channel IDE, just go for SCSI..)

 

[Ben]

LOL! Sorry johnnyGURU, the card is a modded Ultra66 and it's in use right now.

But when I take it out I'll keep you in mind.

 

[NumberOne]

Wow. All those people out there with expensive SCSI systems sure got ticked off at anyone using a cheap IDE RAID configuration. Geez!



<< Hardware Raid means just hotswap and you can boot from a raid0 (stripe set) >>



Well, isn't that what most people get a RAID controller for?? Sure, you can have less CPU utilization and faster performance with a card that has onboard cache and a processor, but not without bumping up the price at LEAST $270+ (that's even if that mysterious sub-$300 SuperTrack66 exists--I haven't found it).

If a cheap controller can do this:
1) Do RAID 0,1,0+1
2) Boot from all configurations
3) Rebuild a failed drive (even if it is using the CPU)

then there is no point in going SCSI or getting an expensive IDE RAID controller unless:
1) You need every ounce of CPU power to be free for other things all the time
2) You must have a hot-swappable, immediate rebuild for constant uptime
3) You operate a webserver or a corporate server where response time is critical

If you meet any of the above criteria then you should shoot yourself for even thinking about cheap IDE RAID. SCSI raid is really not competing with IDE RAID... yet. If you are not building a server for a multinational corporation but still have the money and the yearn for a little more adventure, then try the SuperTrack66 or SuperTrack100 (with 4 and 6 separate IDE channels, respectively). These will cost you several hundred dollars more than the FastTrack.

Let it stand that the FastTrack66/100 RAID controller does offer performance AND abilities that software RAID cannot. At under $80, that's not bad.

 

[Warrenton]

First of the DPT controller with the X15's someone was talking about. That card has a VERY SLOW processor. It is barely able to keep up. That card was also recalled because it was flawed.

 

[Soccerman]

&quot;then there is no point in going SCSI or getting an expensive IDE RAID controller unless&quot;

that's like saying there's no point in getting a 3D accelerator, or getting a faster CPU...

 

[Volitive]

Anyone notice that the Promise Controller (link) has 6 independant channels on it?

Each drive has it's own channel - this is gonna be fast and smooth.
That also means that at all channels filled with drives and 128mb of RAM on
the card running RAID 0 will be a damn-near 6x speed improvement?

Hmmmm....

6x IBM 75GXP 75gig @ $420
1x Promise controller @ $500
1x 128mb EDO 60ns @ $150

Total : $3170 for 450gb. Hmmmm... (c:
Quake 3 Arena, anyone?

 

[arthurb1]

Voltive, I don't think that it will be 6x as fast, You need to figure for certian things, like the fact that Promise has no chance in this life of making a processor even half as fast as Adaptec's or Compaq's (say what you will, but the RAID controllers that come in their ProLiant Servers are pretty darn good) When that data is striped, it has to go through a processor (if the card has one, if not, software emulated through your CPU) to break that data up, and it is just not going to work. You don't even see 2x speed with 2 or even 3 drives striped in SCSI RAID or IDE RAID.

 

[Volitive]

It's actually looking like (by the specs Promise happens to.. uh... promise) this card might be able to pull it off. The spec sheet says that this card will run
with an Intel i960 risc processor - not one of Promise's own design.

The Intel i960 series is RISC architecture, capable of up to 166MIPS.
For comparison, the StrongARM CPU is capable of 2.1MIPS at 206mhz.

Compaq uses LSI chips, and Adaptec probably uses their own (not sure).

The i960 that Promise is using will run at 66mhz, and has all sorts of
great features tucked in there. The bus path is 32-bit, the processor is 32-bit,
and includes 4kb of cache + 2kb of builtin data RAM. It also has a builtin
PCI host controller.

Essentially looking from the specs, this processor actually is made to make a PCI bus on an expansion card, and then move that to the bus it resides on. This makes it likely that all Promise is doing is putting three of its own controllers on the card, attaching them to a 960, then running everything to the normal PCI bus.

So.. judging from the specs - I think this thing is going to smoke.

Oh by the way, these chips are the same chips that HP uses on their NetRaid line of cards for their x86-based servers.

 

[Mday]

why else do you think, i am looking at the promise card, the individual channels...

too bad i don't have that many simms lying around ;-)

and no, i don't NEED that card, let's see how much i am willing to do in terms of setting up my own server ;-)

i am still looking at raid 10 with those ibm drives ;-)

 

[Volitive]

Interesting...

Found this link at Tom's. It's actually looking like you don't lose drive performance by going with
software or CPU controlled RAID controllers, but you lose CPU time because they
can't do it themselves.

Also, check out how the 3-drive and 4 drive configurations go down in performance. Tom
might not have reailzed that having each channel have two drives would cause some performance to be lost when they need to arbitrate.

The more I look at this stuff, the more I want to get that Promise controller. (c;

 

[NumberOne]

<< that's like saying there's no point in getting a 3D accelerator, or getting a faster CPU... >>



Soccerman, how in the world does your comment even remotely make sense. I said:

&quot;There is no point in going SCSI or getting an expensive IDE RAID controller UNLESS:
1) You need every ounce of CPU power to be free for other things all the time
2) You must have a hot-swappable, immediate rebuild for constant uptime
3) You operate a webserver or a corporate server where response time is critical&quot;

We are talking about performance versus price here Soccerman, and to put it in the terms of your comment, if you are some professional graphics designer, then go out and and buy a $1000+ graphics card; otherwise, you don't need it. But you still might want a GOOD graphics card, right?

In the same way, some people might like the ability to boot from a RAID 0+1 configuration and have a setup that would enable a drive to be rebuilt if one went bad even if they aren't some corporation that needs the ultimate performance of a $2000+ SCSI solution. They can still get basic functionality with an IDE RAID card that costs under $80 even if it is not going to offload work from the CPU or maintain an onboard cache. Heck, I want a RAID 0+1 4 disk bootable partition that will offer some performance increase over single IDE drives and without having to worry about loading an OS in order to configure my RAID setup. The promise FastTrack will do it for me. Little cost. Period.

 

[Ben]

<< Wow. All those people out there with expensive SCSI systems sure got ticked off at anyone using a cheap IDE RAID configuration. >>



No. We just don't like hearing about how we &quot;wasted our money&quot; on SCSI RAID.

Still, hindsight tells me that a little more subtlety on my part in the future would be better.