[X4U] Re: RAID Software Feedback

[lists3-200402]

Stephen Lanza <slanza at swcomplement.com> wrote:

>I have started looking at RAID software products. I am accumulating a number
>of odd sized hard drives (20, 30, 60 GB) and would like to use them in a
>more efficient manner.

stick to softraid3. it beats the pants off apple's software raid. if 
you want speed, get an acard ide dual channel ide card (NOT the 
so-called "raid card", but just a dual channel card - the "raid card" 
cards are just dual channel ide cards with cheezy software raid 
burned onto the card).

>The only products that I have been able to find are SoftRAID from SoftRAID
>LLC and ATTO ExpressStripe from ATTO Technology. SoftRAID supports RAID
>Level 0 and 1 while ExpressStripe only supports Level 0.

softraid3 has the best support in the business. they were so highly 
regarded that apple once bundled version 2.2.2 with apple servers. 
it's good stuff...you can mix and match raid and normal volumes from 
different drives/devices. you can now boot (v3.1) from a mirror if 
that's important to you (it's not to me).

the best feature is it's ability to "see" sync problems and to 
automatically resync on the fly...transparent to the user.

>Are these the only products out there now? An older product NXRAID bought by
>FWB Software is discontinued.
>
>Are there any products that support RAID 5? Actually, it would be great if
>anyone could point me towards a good tutorial on RAID.

forget raid5 unless you get a real raid. :)

>Does Apple have a software raid product? The only thing I can find on their
>website is XRAID, a hardware product. I assume it has a software component
>but is not sold separately.

apple does have software raid (built into disk utility) but it sucks. 
when the mirror "breaks" you have to work to fix it. softraid3 is on 
autopilot. ;)

>Does anyone have experience with SoftRAID or other software products? If so,
>I would appreciate it if you would share your experiences. Thanks.

we have softraid3 deployed to more than three dozen shops. i can't 
imagine using apple's software raid for our clients. there's no 
comparison...and apple will probably never be able to keep up with 
softraid3's feature set and stability/support.

don

>Stephen Lanza
>Software Complement