![]() ![]() Hardware independent – RAID is implemented on the OS which keeps things consistent regardless of the hardware manufacturer.Inflexible – Your ability to reshape, split and perform other maintenance on arrays varies tremendously with each card.Lack of standardization between controllers (configuration, management, etc)– The keystrokes and software that you use to manage and monitor one card likely won’t work on another.Additional cost – Hardware RAID cards cost more than standard disk controllers.Often you are tied to specific piece of software that the vendor provides. Monitoring implementations are all over the road – Depending on the vendor and model the ability and interface to monitor the health and performance of your array varies greatly.This is especially bad if working with a discontinued model that has failed after years of operation On-Disk meta data can make it near impossible to recover data without a compatible RAID card – If your controller goes casters-up you’ll have to find a compatible model to replace it with, your disks won’t be useful without the controller.Proprietary – Minimal or complete lack of detailed hardware and software specifications.Performance improvements (sometimes) – If you are running tremendously intense workloads or utilizing an underpowered CPU hardware raid can offer a performance improvement.Easy to replace disks – If a disk fails just pull it out and replace it with a new one.Easy to set up – Most controllers have a menu driven wizard to guide you through building your array or even are automatically set up right out of the box.After cursing loudly at the RAID controller I started wondering if the pros of hardware raid really outweigh the cons for a general purpose, nothing special, 1 or 2U server that just needs disk mirroring. Luckily I had a similar system sitting idle, so I tested the same disks in this server and they worked just fine. Upon reboot the hardware controller says to me “sorry buddy, I don’t see any drives” and wouldn’t boot. ![]() But when replacing the failed disk with a shiny new one suddenly both drives went red and the system crashed. Today a server with a hardware RAID controller reported (when I say reported I actually mean lit a small red LED on the front of the machine) a bad disk, which is not uncommon. ![]() I’m a sysadmin by trade and as such I deal with RAID enabled servers on a daily basis. ![]()
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January 2023
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