When do we do away with Hardware RAID
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@DustinB3403 said:
- Support for software RAID
By software do you mean the Operating System? It was my understanding that the OS is the only application that knows you are using software RAID... everything else assumes it is a physical disk.
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@MattSpeller Thanks!
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Let's begin with a definition of software RAID so we're all clear.
My understanding is it's a RAID which is transparent to the hardware* (seen as individual disks in BIOS) but controlled by software (OS?) to write data in such a fashion that it becomes a RAID.
*fake RAID not withstanding, though worth mentioning for clarity. "Fake RAID" is another form of software RAID but run by another part of the computer (BIOS?).
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@coliver Software as in MDADM Raid.
It's installed into many linux distro's, but it is not an Operating System by its self.
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@DustinB3403 said:
@coliver Software as in MDADM Raid.
It's installed into many linux distro's, but it is not an Operating System by its self.
Right, the Operating System sets it up. But to any other application on the machine it is just another folder under "/". Or however you choose to mount it. I was thinking more along Support for Software RAID... where do you really care about that outside of the OS, does the OS support it or not?
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With FakeRAID only BIOS has the details needed to access the array, which makes it extremely dangerous.
Software RAID performs the same, regardless of the hardware you're running.
As for support, if the software array were to crash, how do you recover your data. That is what I'd look for with Software RAID Support.
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@DustinB3403 said:
With FakeRAID only BIOS has the details needed to access the array, which makes it extremely dangerous.
Software RAID performs the same, regardless of the hardware you're running.
As for support, if the software array were to crash, how do you recover your data. That is what I'd look for with Software RAID Support.
FakeRAID can generally be seen by the operating system. Hence why you have to install drivers in most Windows implementations to use it. You can actually dig into disk manager or fdisk to see them.
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@coliver said:
By software do you mean the Operating System? It was my understanding that the OS is the only application that knows you are using software RAID... everything else assumes it is a physical disk.
Doesn't have to be the OS, but any RAID is before the mounted block device so even if it is a third party RAID system (like ZFS would be) it gets a filesystem on top of it and presented to the rest of the system as files. No matter what you do with storage, it's all abstracted away by the time that it gets to applications.
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@DustinB3403 said:
With FakeRAID only BIOS has the details needed to access the array, which makes it extremely dangerous.
If setup as RAID1, it's possible that it's not dangerous at all. Depends on if it writes any extra data or does anything differently than if it were just a single disk. My experience has been that it is completely transparent and you can turn off RAID and boot to the non-failed drive.
Software RAID performs the same, regardless of the hardware you're running.
??? You lost me here
As for support, if the software array were to crash, how do you recover your data. That is what I'd look for with Software RAID Support.
Well, one of two things happens. Either you're running RAID1 and you boot to the working disk or for any other RAID level you recover from backups.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@coliver said:
By software do you mean the Operating System? It was my understanding that the OS is the only application that knows you are using software RAID... everything else assumes it is a physical disk.
Doesn't have to be the OS, but any RAID is before the mounted block device so even if it is a third party RAID system (like ZFS would be) it gets a filesystem on top of it and presented to the rest of the system as files. No matter what you do with storage, it's all abstracted away by the time that it gets to applications.
Ok, that's where the software support bullet in the beginning confused me. I assumed @DustinB3403 meant application support.
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@coliver said:
FakeRAID can
generallyalways be seen by the operating system. -
@MattSpeller said:
*fake RAID not withstanding, though worth mentioning for clarity. "Fake RAID" is another form of software RAID but run by another part of the computer (BIOS?).
FakeRAID is a third party software RAID with a hardware component whose purpose is to mislead customers into thinking that they are purchasing hardware RAID.
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@coliver said:
@DustinB3403 said:
@coliver Software as in MDADM Raid.
It's installed into many linux distro's, but it is not an Operating System by its self.
Right, the Operating System sets it up. But to any other application on the machine it is just another folder under "/". Or however you choose to mount it. I was thinking more along Support for Software RAID... where do you really care about that outside of the OS, does the OS support it or not?
For example: Windows has poor support for software RAID while Linux and Solaris have excellent support. ESXi has no software RAID at all while Xen and KVM have very good software RAID.
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@MattSpeller Software RAID is universal from one system to the next.
IE MDADM RAID performs the same on System A or System X.
Where as FakeRAID is often based on BIOS and whatever crap is in there.
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@DustinB3403 said:
Where as FakeRAID is based on BIOS and whatever crap is in there.
No, it's just faking hardware. Often it touches the BIOS, but often it does not. Not specific tie to the BIOS. Intel, for example, is famous for selling boxed, non-BIOS based FakeRAID cards.
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@DustinB3403 said:
@MattSpeller Software RAID is universal from one system to the next.
OK I think you mean Software RAID has all the same capabilities regardless of what hardware it's run on.
That's very different than "Software RAID performs the same, regardless of the hardware you're running."
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Alright, we've had a good initial throat clearing
When would you consider splitting off from hardware arrays?
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Hardware RAID is a full processor and memory and all RAID processing happens in dedicated hardware that does not rely on on the core CPU and system memory. It's a completely hardware abstracted, encapsulated and isolated storage subsystem that is interfaced to the computer as a single, discrete block device.
Software RAID is a software based storage abstraction that utilized the core CPU and system memory for RAID functions and abstracts and encapsulated the block devices after they have been attached to the OS.
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This is a huge question and depends on a huge range of needs. Hardware RAID is the slower of the two and less flexible, but it is far easier to use and manage, especially in an SMB or in an enterprise using a datacenter staffed by bench pros. Hardware RAID offloads CPU and memory from the main system (up to about 10% of a core and up to about 2GB of RAM currently) and provides blind swapping which is pretty critical for SMBs and datacenter usage and has power loss prevention - typically via non-volatile caching.
Sofware RAID requires you to handle all of the power protection externally to the chassis and pretty much precludes blind swapping requiring a knowledgeable system admin to be on hand for even the most trivial drive replacement. Software RAID leverages unused core CPU and memory for more processing power than a RAID card can realistically do. Software RAID is more flexible and has more options (RAID 7 is unique to software RAID, for example.)
Software RAID is obviously cheaper in capex but requires more effort and experience. Hardware RAID costs more and is marginally slower but makes hardware support vastly easier.
