No matter how fast your CPU is, you aren't going to beat a dedicated hardware RAID controller. Also, if you're going to spend the money for SCSI, why wouldn't you spend a little more and go with a hardware solution? That's like buying a BMW then "saving money" by adding the fog lights yourself.
You are going to beat hardware controller, because the chip running your software RAID (P4 Xeon, 2GHz) is much faster than the chip on the hardware controller (arm, 100MHz). Your only limitation is the IO bandwidth, thats why you go with SCSI.
Server manufacturers sell hardware RAID as expensive add-on, but they are not advertising any benchmarks showing speed advantage. Because there is none. Current controllers are just not good enough, can't keep up with speed advances of CPUs.
Software RAID, excepting mirroring a pair of drives, sucks. Period. The performance hit is not worth the return. Ever do stripping in software? Worse, RAID 5 in software? It sucks. You could spend a few $ and get hardware RAID and not only actually get better performance but not be concerned that some corruption in your OS that is managing that RAID will affect the data stored on it.
It sucks on your hardware. When you use fast SCSI disks and have fast CPU(s), software RAID is much faster then (very expensive) hardware RAID solutions. The chip on your hardware RAID card (usualy ARM) can't be faster than CPU.
Regarding trust, you should trust (open source) software RAID more than proprietary firmware.
Previous Oracle release, 8i, was certified on RedHat 6.2, and installed cleanly out of the box. The latest 9i release, released last week, is certified on SuSe, and does not install on unmodified RedHat Linux.
What about more users on one workstation at the same time? Two users on dual processor workstation will utilize more power than one user on one CPU.
You can put two or more video cards in a PC. Or use dual head card. With USB, its easy to plug in few keyboards, mice,...
The only problem is that operating systems do not support such setups at the moment.
Moderators, wake up. The guy in article says clearly he has plenty of RAM (1GB) and enough CPU power. So how can be recommendation to use more RAM, at least half a Gig, and better CPU informative?
It is common to post here without reading linked articles, but posting replies without reading original post is really something.
From the page: UK-based Alba chose Cirrus Logic's PS7500FE device because it provides a highly-integrated solution that combines major system components onto a single chip. The PS7500FE incorporates a 32-bit ARM RISC processor with advanced peripheral functions, including a floating point co-processor, a display controller, a complete memory controller, and
direct interfaces to modem and LAN devices.
I though I will find at least one server from 'Linux friendly' IBM running Linux in the test. They supplied few servers with AIX, dozen servers with Windows, but none with Linux. Why?
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Do bears shit in the woods?
No matter how fast your CPU is, you aren't going to beat a dedicated hardware RAID controller. Also, if you're going to spend the money for SCSI, why wouldn't you spend a little more and go with a hardware solution? That's like buying a BMW then "saving money" by adding the fog lights yourself.
You are going to beat hardware controller, because the chip running your software RAID (P4 Xeon, 2GHz) is much faster than the chip on the hardware controller (arm, 100MHz). Your only limitation is the IO bandwidth, thats why you go with SCSI.
Server manufacturers sell hardware RAID as expensive add-on, but they are not advertising any benchmarks showing speed advantage. Because there is none. Current controllers are just not good enough, can't keep up with speed advances of CPUs.
Software RAID, excepting mirroring a pair of drives, sucks. Period. The performance hit is not worth the return. Ever do stripping in software? Worse, RAID 5 in software? It sucks. You could spend a few $ and get hardware RAID and not only actually get better performance but not be concerned that some corruption in your OS that is managing that RAID will affect the data stored on it.
It sucks on your hardware. When you use fast SCSI disks and have fast CPU(s), software RAID is much faster then (very expensive) hardware RAID solutions. The chip on your hardware RAID card (usualy ARM) can't be faster than CPU.
Regarding trust, you should trust (open source) software RAID more than proprietary firmware.
The server they are using is far more expensive than $1000. For $1000 you get 256MB memory, and terribly slow IDE hard drive. Was it more like $2000?
It seems that Oracle is moving away from RedHat.
How old are you Mr. 'immortal' Chiu ?
You can put two or more video cards in a PC. Or use dual head card. With USB, its easy to plug in few keyboards, mice, ...
The only problem is that operating systems do not support such setups at the moment.
It is common to post here without reading linked articles, but posting replies without reading original post is really something.
From the page: UK-based Alba chose Cirrus Logic's PS7500FE device because it provides a highly-integrated solution that combines major system components onto a single chip. The PS7500FE incorporates a 32-bit ARM RISC processor with advanced peripheral functions, including a floating point co-processor, a display controller, a complete memory controller, and direct interfaces to modem and LAN devices.
I though I will find at least one server from 'Linux friendly' IBM running Linux in the test. They supplied few servers with AIX, dozen servers with Windows, but none with Linux. Why?