[TriLUG] B320i RAID controller driver

Fri May 22 11:57:06 EDT 2020

Anecdotal data point:  I've been running a mdadm-controlled software RAID-5 across three HDDs for a few years now.  I had one disk fail, and the array worked as it was supposed to; no data was lost and the recovery/rebuild doesn't stand out in my mind as being painful (I don't remember it, so it must not've been too bad).

Protip:  Get in the habit of periodically checking /proc/mdstat to see if all the drives are healthy.  I barely noticed the performance hit while my array was degraded.  There's probably some smart automated reporting thing you can do, too.

Also: We had a TriLUG presentation a while back about scaling issues with RAID-5.  YMMV.

-B

-----Original Message-----
From: TriLUG <trilug-bounces+bhenning=pineresearch.com at trilug.org> On Behalf Of Joseph Mack NA3T via TriLUG
Sent: Friday, May 22, 2020 11:49 AM
To: Matt Flyer <matt at noway2.thruhere.net>; Triangle Linux Users Group General Discussion <trilug at trilug.org>
Subject: Re: [TriLUG] B320i RAID controller driver

On Fri, 22 May 2020, Matt Flyer via TriLUG wrote:

> It is looking like my only viable path forward is to disable the 
> hardware RAID controller and let the OS have the disks directly.

Not letting any proprietary hardware handle your disks is preferred way in Linux. From all the reading I did, everyone just says to let the kernel handle your disks (RAID in software).

> I suppose I could use MDADM to create a software array, but this isn't 
> without it's own issues and additional maintenance.

yes, but if your machine crashes, you can recover the disks on another machine.

> Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas?

how about zfs? I'm using it. It's more complicated (or maybe just less familiar) than running single disks and it will be more complicated than just letting your raid controller handle everything.

I looked into mdadm and I thought that if I was going to learn a whole new way of doing things, I may as well go the whole hog and do zfs.

> Perhaps I can put a different raid controller in there that is supported?

as long as when your hardware goes belly up, you can bring up your disks on another machine with exactly the same raid controller.

Joe

--
Joseph Mack NA3T EME(B,D), FM05lw North Carolina jmack (at) wm7d (dot) net - azimuthal equidistant map generator at http://www.wm7d.net/azproj.shtml Homepage http://www.austintek.com/ It's GNU/Linux!
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