Re: [TCLUG:22757] Raid and other storage stories

[dopp@acm.cs.umn.edu]

On Tue, Oct 17, 2000 at 12:54:46PM -0500, Nick.T.Reinking@supervalu.com wrote:
> The Escalade 6xxx series support ATA/66.

Well, maybe they have an ATA/100 version planned...

> 
> They're really cool...

They look cool...

> 
> 2-8 channels, 1 device/channel (which is why ATA/66 is
> plenty good).  It's completely internal.

Internal is good.  I have a full tower, so I'll have the room.

> 
> The 3ware driver makes any RAIDed drives look like a single
> SCSI drive.
> 
> Furthermore, the 3ware supports other cool things such as
> command queueing, etc.  Plus, they have an onboard co-processor.
> (same one most SCSI RAID cards have).

How about logical partitioning?  Does the Escalade allow me to make, say, 4
drives into a single logical drive and then partition that logical drive
into say, 3 logical partitions which all appear as seperate drives to my
machine? 

The reason I ask is because I was thinking about the following setup:

4 30GB ATA/100 Deskstars
1 logical drive
2 logical partitions

I suppose I could just take the 1 logical drive and partition it through
the OS, but if the controller handles it for me, it's that much nicer.

> 
> The FastTrack card is both poorly supported, plus it doesn't
> have a co-processor.  All it does for you is make your RAID
> drives look like one drive.  It's still all software otherwise.

Ah, thanks for the heads-up.

> 
> >From what I've heard, these cards are pretty amazingly fast.
> IDE is faster than SCSI for one device, since the command
> set is much smaller (and faster).  Since there is only one device/channel
> on this controller... well, it's pretty amazing.  Plus, it has an
> Alan Cox approved open source driver in 2.2.15+.
> 

Eenteresteeng... I'll have to give it a try.  Where do you suggest I get
one of these controllers?  It looks like one can only buy them through
offical 3ware resellers.

Gabe
-- 
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Gabe Turner				       |  	   X-President,
UNIX Systems Administrator,		       | Assoc. for Computing Machinery
U of M Supercomputing Institute for	       |    Univerisity of Minnesota
Digital Simulation and Advanced Computation    |       dopp@acm.cs.umn.edu

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