Should I use SW RAID / setting up RAID on HP Proliant server with Ubuntu

raid ubuntu hp software-raid hardware-raid

5,290

Unless you enabled the battery backed cache and have a cache at all (not all HP SmartArrays come with that anymore, which boggles the mind) then I don't see much difference between the two. Software RAID is ever so slightly more fragile in extremity, but for nearly all running should perform just as fast. If not faster.

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Marko Poutiainen

Software engineer with experience in embedded SW, telecoms (mobile and infrastructure) SW/HW integration, database design with Visual Basic and SQLServer and build management and quality processes. Now trying to become more proficient in all things Linux, especially embedded.

Updated on September 17, 2022

Comments

Marko Poutiainen over 1 year

I have looked at a number of messages regarding software vs. hardware RAID here on SF but can't figure out which one I should use. The server I'm installing is HP Proliant ML330 G6 and the RAID controller on that is HP Smart Array B110i SATA RAID Controller (RAID 0/1/0+1). Is this a real HW RAID or should I just skip it and use the SW RAID?

The box has three disks, one 250GB and two 1.5TB disks. The smaller one I thought will have the /boot, / and /swap partitions and the two bigger ones will be on RAID1. How do I actually set this up? I tried using the tools that came with the server (StartSmart, as well as the ROM configuration utility) and configured the two disks as a RAID array, but the Ubuntun installer still sees them as two separate disks.

Should I just first install Ubuntu on the small disk and then configure the RAID array or should I somehow be able to configure the RAID array so that the two disks are shown as one to the installer?
Marko Poutiainen almost 14 years

I don't seem to be able to find info on whether this model has the battery backed cache or not.
PiL almost 14 years

A RAID 1 software doesn't take much resources. And if the raid controller is those kind of software/driver raid (not real hardware raid) then a raid made by OS is the only way to go.
Deb almost 14 years

@makis During boot, when the RAID card come up, it'll say something like, "Smart Array P110i (v2.33 / 0MB)". The number in parenthesis are the firmware version and the cache-size.
Ryan Ferretti almost 14 years

For RAID 1 software RAID shouldn't be much of a problem. When you start getting into problems is with RAID 4-6 as there is a lot of math which needs to be done for each write operation.