nVidia FakeRAID
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@MattSpeller said:
Just so we're all on the same page here. Examples.
"hardware" RAID:
http://www.amd.com/en-us/products/chipsets/9-series
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/M5A97/overview/"software / fake" RAID:
http://www.nvidia.ca/object/product_nforce_750i_sli_us.html
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P5ND/I don't see any description or anything that would let me differentiate them here
Exactly. I know that AMD and Asus were making hardware chipset RAID (NTG buys them a lot via HP commercial gear) and that nVidia and Intel do a lot of FakeRAID trying to trick people into thinking that they are chipset RAID. And, as you can see with PSX, it is working. They really do, most of the time, trick people into not understanding what they are seeing and even IT pros are often faked out. Hence the term, FakeRAID.
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@scottalanmiller So the only way to really tell, is to buy the thing, setup RAID in the BIOS, boot to a live CD and see if you see an array or a bunch of drives? There MUST be a better way to know.
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@MattSpeller said:
@scottalanmiller So the only way to really tell, is to buy the thing, setup RAID in the BIOS, boot to a live CD and see if you see an array or a bunch of drives? There MUST be a better way to know.
Well, that's the best way. When you are dealing with a vendor lying to you, that's the case with ANY product. You can check product reviews, of course.
However, it isn't like you ever want chipset RAID either. While it isn't FakeRAID it is still pretty silly. For a low end desktop, whatever, but for a server? You don't want that either. You can improve your odds by working with enterprise vendors like AMD instead of consumer ones like nVidia and avoid vendors like Intel for chipsets who have sold their souls are their names mean zip. But that is about all. Vendors like HP and Dell will never sell you FakeRAID, you can rely on their reputations.
The best way to be sure is to only buy RAID that gives you the details like what CPU they are using, how much memory it has, etc. FakeRAID can't state those details as they don't exist. Chipset RAID will have will crappy details that will make it not sound very appealing, but will have details.
Enterprise RAID is normally 512MB or RAM or higher. Can't get that with FakeRAID. Nor can you get Flash Backing or Battery Backed Caches.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Exactly. I know that AMD and Asus were making hardware chipset RAID (NTG buys them a lot via HP commercial gear) and that nVidia and Intel do a lot of FakeRAID trying to trick people into thinking that they are chipset RAID. And, as you can see with PSX, it is working.
No, because I've heard this same shit over and over and over again since the beginning of time with regards to "chipset" RAID. It's stupid back in 2002, it's stupid now.
So your "definition" of fakeRAID depends on if the system can pierce the veil of the abstraction? I can do that on LSI cards, Adaptec cards, just about anything.
Does it do RAID functions? Yes. Just because I can do some low level things like SMART status doesn't make it fake.
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@PSX_Defector said:
So your "definition" of fakeRAID depends on if the system can pierce the veil of the abstraction? I can do that on LSI cards, Adaptec cards, just about anything.
Through SAS? No you can't. Show me that being done.
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@PSX_Defector said:
No, because I've heard this same shit over and over and over again since the beginning of time with regards to "chipset" RAID. It's stupid back in 2002, it's stupid now.
I think you are just confusing chipset (hardware RAID ) with FakeRAID. If you think that chipset RAID is FakeRAID no wonder you think that people are dredging the same thing up over and over again.
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@PSX_Defector said:
Does it do RAID functions? Yes. Just because I can do some low level things like SMART status doesn't make it fake.
See, you are confused. You think that it is the RAID that is fake. Like we've said over and over, it is not and you are being duped and confused about what the discussion is about. The "fake" in the name refers to the hardware being fake, not the RAID. Every time you mention chipset RAID or that the RAID it really RAID you are demonstrating that you are talking about something other than the topic of this thread and are confused as to even what FakeRAID is. So that you are stating that it doesn't exist obviously has no merit as you are not even talking about FakeRAID when you say that, you are talking about hardware RAID.
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Like I keep explaining over and over, FakeRAID is really RAID. It just isn't hardware RAID. Chipset RAID is hardware RAID and not part of the discussion.
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It's easy to see how well manufacturers like nVidia and Intel get people to be fooled into thinking they are selling hardware.
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Alright. Now that you've destroyed any good feelings I had for any hardware vendors, ever.... The more important questions remain.
What do you buy to setup a "cheap and cheerful" home lab setup. What is a good price for a 4 to 8 port RAID card (previously enjoyed?)? What should one look for?Edit: Also I think you need to adjust your definition of "common knowledge" lol
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Most of the time for a home lab you want software RAID or just get whatever hardware RAID comes with your server gear. You would rarely want to get hardware RAID on its own for home use.
If you do, Adaptec and LSI are the big names in hardware enterprise class RAID cards.
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@MattSpeller said:
Alright. Now that you've destroyed any good feelings I had for any hardware vendors, ever.... The more important questions remain.
What do you buy to setup a "cheap and cheerful" home lab setup. What is a good price for a 4 to 8 port RAID card (previously enjoyed?)? What should one look for?Edit: Also I think you need to adjust your definition of "common knowledge" lol
I would look at SAS or SATA expansion cards (or a motherboard with lots of SATA ports) and do an Linux MD RAID. Very easy to do and fairly robust (at least mine has been) much less expensive then a hardware RAID card. The cool thing, if you use XenServer you can do it at the hypervisor level and present sections of it to your VMs.
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@coliver said:
I would look at SAS or SATA expansion cards (or a motherboard with lots of SATA ports) and do an Linux MD RAID. Very easy to do and fairly robust (at least mine has been) much less expensive then a hardware RAID card. The cool thing, if you use XenServer you can do it at the hypervisor level and present sections of it to your VMs.
HyperV does software RAID too, it's crappy Windows software RAID, but for a home lab it is okay. Xen and KVM both have Linux MD RAID as an option. It is really only VMware that doesn't have software RAID included and leaves you needing something else.
There are a few third party software RAID options for VMware but HCL support is few and far between and often gets dropped so updates can be an issue.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@PSX_Defector said:
So your "definition" of fakeRAID depends on if the system can pierce the veil of the abstraction? I can do that on LSI cards, Adaptec cards, just about anything.
Through SAS? No you can't. Show me that being done.
SAS is just SCSI commands over SATA.
Any and all cards using SAS can pierce the veil of disk abstraction to the disk level.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@coliver said:
I would look at SAS or SATA expansion cards (or a motherboard with lots of SATA ports) and do an Linux MD RAID. Very easy to do and fairly robust (at least mine has been) much less expensive then a hardware RAID card. The cool thing, if you use XenServer you can do it at the hypervisor level and present sections of it to your VMs.
HyperV does software RAID too, it's crappy Windows software RAID, but for a home lab it is okay. Xen and KVM both have Linux MD RAID as an option. It is really only VMware that doesn't have software RAID included and leaves you needing something else.
There are a few third party software RAID options for VMware but HCL support is few and far between and often gets dropped so updates can be an issue.
I didn't realize that HyperV had a software RAID option, is there a stability issue when using the Windows software RAID?
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@PSX_Defector said:
SAS is just SCSI commands over SATA.
Huh? There is no ATA protocol in SAS. SAS is pure SCSI.
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@PSX_Defector said:
Any and all cards using SAS can pierce the veil of disk abstraction to the disk level.
How are you accomplishing that? Using either SAS or SATA (two different things) hardware RAID, how are you attempting to pierce the veil? The drives are not even exposed. Rarely is there even a manual option to do so. How are you doing this exactly?
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Also, by stating that, by extension you are saying that SAN, since a SAN over iSCSI is just a SAS array, cannot encapsulate its drives either.
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There is a reason why people complain about the inability to get SMART data off of drives on Adaptec controllers. Even if you wanted to access it, there is rarely an option to disable the encapsulation and turn the RAID aspects of the card off. This is why the drives get presented as individual RAID 0 arrays instead of raw drives. The encapsulation is so complete that you can't even work around it effectively, even working at the card level.
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scott, you have a tendency of saying its a particular vendor/ company that is responsible for things like this. I really think you should amend your title to include all other vendors that do this and not just pick out 1. It is equal to saying target got hacked, but then leave out home depot, jimmy johns and everyone else that was hacked as well.
