Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World
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@dustinb3403 said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
So you would agree that FakeRAID wouldn't be called FakeRAID if it wasn't attempting to masquerade as if it was hardware based, but instead just stated that it was actually Software RAID with a silly configuration menu.
Since it is still software. Correct?
Correct. What makes it "fake" is that it is "faking" that it is hardware. Not that it is faking being RAID. It's real RAID, just not real hardware.
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Another good resource.
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@scottalanmiller said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@pete-s said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@dustinb3403 No, Broadcom 3008 has it's own integrated cpu, on board memory etc. It's just not enough performance for it to do all kinds of raid. It's the same controller as Dell H330 and a bunch of others make cards with it as well.
From the specs:
The SAS 3008 offered with the Avago Integrated RAID (IR) feature is a
low cost, high performance RAID solution designed for blade, entry and
mid-range servers that require redundancy and high availability but where
a full featured RAID implementation is cost prohibitive or not desired. The
Avago advanced Integrated RAID options include Integrated Mirroring
(IM), which is RAID 1, Integrated Mirroring Enhanced (IME), known as RAID
1E, Integrated Striping (IS), which is RAID 0, and Integrated Mirroring and
Striping (IMS) which is RAID 10. By simplifying the RAID configuration
options, Integrated RAID is easy to install and configure and meets the
needs of most internal RAID requirements.https://mangolassi.it/topic/6375/examining-the-dell-perc-h310-controller/
The H3xx series is hardware. Terribly slow hardware, but hardware.
The H330 is a 3008 based product but it has a different firmware package, and some cut down internals so it has a much lower queue depth, and a bastardized mega-raid capability (no write cache). There is memory on the card, but it's for the queues.
The HBA330 isn't slow it @#%@% flies but it's pass through only. It is the full queue'd (exposes the raw possible queue based on the memory which is crazy high), and has no firmware option for a RAID firmware.
The H310 was a LSI2008 based ASIC package which had its queue crippled to something pathetic like 25.
Dell runs their own trunk for HBA firmware's rather than just grabbing various checkpoints on the tree is my understanding, so beyond these customizations, you will sometimes see different behavior. Sometimes they will selectively ship a fix, and avoid a feature they found problematic or didn't want (Tri-Mode RAID wasn't supported on the newest PERC's at first).
The controller industry is crazy opaque.
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@scottalanmiller said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
Dell and HPE both make some really silly software RAID devices that require hardware dongles and configure through the BIOS, but are NOT FakeRAID.
You talking about the S series, or the Intel CPU ROC functions for NVMe drives (which have a dongle for certain features, or the ability to use non-Intel drives). I thought the OEM's were shunning VROC.
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@storageninja said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
The controller industry is crazy opaque.
This is really the only thing worth considering when looking for a controller. .
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At home, I'll use LVM to build the RAID when using Linux, or the built-in RAID on my mobo with Windows. I don't want to spend extra money on enterprise RAID for at home. 99% of what I have at home is stateless, so reloads are easy. Worst case is I have to reinstall 70GB of games, but that's backed up so it's easy if I hit a scenario I cannot recover a RAIDed disk, or whatever.
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@scottalanmiller What about RAID 1 on the motherboard? Yeah it's "fake", but it's still effectively mirroring the drives. I use that on my home pc and it hasn't failed me.
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@dave247 said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@scottalanmiller What about RAID 1 on the motherboard? Yeah it's "fake", but it's still effectively mirroring the drives. I use that on my home pc and it hasn't failed me.
Thats what we use .
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@dave247 said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@scottalanmiller What about RAID 1 on the motherboard? Yeah it's "fake", but it's still effectively mirroring the drives. I use that on my home pc and it hasn't failed me.
Depends on the implementation. Normally the question is not about whether it is better than nothing, but how is it better than the Windows OS' included RAID 1?
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@wrcombs said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@dave247 said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@scottalanmiller What about RAID 1 on the motherboard? Yeah it's "fake", but it's still effectively mirroring the drives. I use that on my home pc and it hasn't failed me.
Thats what we use .
Is it? I thought you just determined that you didn't have FakeRAID, but had to use Windows RAID instead (which is the recommended choice anyway.)
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@obsolesce said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
At home, I'll use LVM to build the RAID when using Linux, or the built-in RAID on my mobo with Windows. I don't want to spend extra money on enterprise RAID for at home.
That IS enterprise in the Linux case. Windows Software RAID is free, too, maybe not enterprise, but not horrible to the point of not being better than nothing.
Enterprise RAID is almost always free.
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@storageninja said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@scottalanmiller said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
Dell and HPE both make some really silly software RAID devices that require hardware dongles and configure through the BIOS, but are NOT FakeRAID.
You talking about the S series, or the Intel CPU ROC functions for NVMe drives (which have a dongle for certain features, or the ability to use non-Intel drives). I thought the OEM's were shunning VROC.
That's newer, and there is some interesting stuff there.
But I'm talking about the older SAS controller options (maybe it is S series?) that are basically just SAS controllers with drivers to install, but they are open about it and don't hide anything. Basically just a trivial step up from Windows Software RAID, but with support for Hyper-V, VMware ESXi, and most everything else, plus really simple management utilities.
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@scottalanmiller there isn’t a software based raid option on ESXi unless you pass it to a VM or use vSAN. The cheapest raid controllers supported are the BOSS modules M.2 mirroring things.
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@storageninja said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@scottalanmiller there isn’t a software based raid option on ESXi unless you pass it to a VM or use vSAN. The cheapest raid controllers supported are the BOSS modules M.2 mirroring things.
I think that's what our VxRails are coming with.
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@scottalanmiller said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@wrcombs said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@dave247 said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@scottalanmiller What about RAID 1 on the motherboard? Yeah it's "fake", but it's still effectively mirroring the drives. I use that on my home pc and it hasn't failed me.
Thats what we use .
Is it? I thought you just determined that you didn't have FakeRAID, but had to use Windows RAID instead (which is the recommended choice anyway.)
I just know that we mirror Drives, WE use RAID 1 : Using
CLTR+Fduring the boot. Is it possible we are using FakeRAID? Completely! like we have all came to the conclusion of: This place is diseased with horrible practices. Why we dont use Windows RAID- but instead use FastTrak? I have no Idea. -
@stacksofplates said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@scottalanmiller there isn’t a software based raid option on ESXi unless you pass it to a VM or use vSAN. The cheapest raid controllers supported are the BOSS modules M.2 mirroring things.
I think that's what our VxRails are coming with.
14Gen VxRAIL and ReadyNodes use's BOSS for the boot modules. VxRAIL keeps the factory re-install image I think on the SD Cards in case you need to factory nuke a node.
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@wrcombs said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@scottalanmiller said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@wrcombs said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@dave247 said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@scottalanmiller What about RAID 1 on the motherboard? Yeah it's "fake", but it's still effectively mirroring the drives. I use that on my home pc and it hasn't failed me.
Thats what we use .
Is it? I thought you just determined that you didn't have FakeRAID, but had to use Windows RAID instead (which is the recommended choice anyway.)
I just know that we mirror Drives, WE use RAID 1 : Using
CLTR+Fduring the boot. Is it possible we are using FakeRAID? Completely! like we have all came to the conclusion of: This place is diseased with horrible practices. Why we dont use Windows RAID- but instead use FastTrak? I have no Idea.Oh, if you are doing CTRL-F during boot to configure RAID, pretty likely it is FakeRAID. But the one in your other thread didn't support that. That's a unique one, though?
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@storageninja said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@scottalanmiller there isn’t a software based raid option on ESXi unless you pass it to a VM or use vSAN. The cheapest raid controllers supported are the BOSS modules M.2 mirroring things.
There used to be the S100 or something. I've seen VMware deployed (some time ago) with Software RAID from a third party.
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@scottalanmiller said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@wrcombs said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@scottalanmiller said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@wrcombs said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@dave247 said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@scottalanmiller What about RAID 1 on the motherboard? Yeah it's "fake", but it's still effectively mirroring the drives. I use that on my home pc and it hasn't failed me.
Thats what we use .
Is it? I thought you just determined that you didn't have FakeRAID, but had to use Windows RAID instead (which is the recommended choice anyway.)
I just know that we mirror Drives, WE use RAID 1 : Using
CLTR+Fduring the boot. Is it possible we are using FakeRAID? Completely! like we have all came to the conclusion of: This place is diseased with horrible practices. Why we dont use Windows RAID- but instead use FastTrak? I have no Idea.Oh, if you are doing CTRL-F during boot to configure RAID, pretty likely it is FakeRAID. But the one in your other thread didn't support that. That's a unique one, though?
Unique for sure, Because we us FakeRAID: but we could set it up to use Software RAID..
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@wrcombs said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@scottalanmiller said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@wrcombs said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@scottalanmiller said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@wrcombs said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@dave247 said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@scottalanmiller What about RAID 1 on the motherboard? Yeah it's "fake", but it's still effectively mirroring the drives. I use that on my home pc and it hasn't failed me.
Thats what we use .
Is it? I thought you just determined that you didn't have FakeRAID, but had to use Windows RAID instead (which is the recommended choice anyway.)
I just know that we mirror Drives, WE use RAID 1 : Using
CLTR+Fduring the boot. Is it possible we are using FakeRAID? Completely! like we have all came to the conclusion of: This place is diseased with horrible practices. Why we dont use Windows RAID- but instead use FastTrak? I have no Idea.Oh, if you are doing CTRL-F during boot to configure RAID, pretty likely it is FakeRAID. But the one in your other thread didn't support that. That's a unique one, though?
Unique for sure, Because we us FakeRAID: but we could set it up to use Software RAID..
Right, you have options, but chose the weird one, it would seem. And the one that can't be used uniformly.
