RAID5 - Intel fakeraid vs Linux mdraid

[LstOfTheBrunnenG]

Any benchmarks to compare the above?

[LstOfTheBrunnenG]

Bump? Nobody knows how ICH10R stands up to mdraid?

[Eva_Unit_0]

I don't have any specific numbers or benchmarks, but I recommend using mdraid in any circumstance except for true hardware raid. I'd expect the performance of fakeraid and mdraid to be nearly identical on the same hardware, but mdraid has nice benefits such as being re-formable on any controller and wonderful managment using the linux tools.

mdraid rocks

[LstOfTheBrunnenG]

It does indeed, doesn't it? :D

I was just briefly considering buying a befier PSU and moving my RAID5 into the desktop I'm building. The array would be reformatted as NTFS using the ICH9R's RAID5, and I'd virtualize Linux for anything I needed it for. At the moment my mdraid is straddling the four connections on my nForce4 and one (possibly more later) on an integrated SiL3114. Performance is still great, though, even over the network.

[Eva_Unit_0]

Oh okay, the decision is about more than just mdraid vs fakeraid. Well, I'd say the decision really comes down to whether or not you'd like to consolidate machines or not. mdraid is probably a more robust solution overall than fakeraid in a windows environment, but either should work alright so the real question is "do you want one machine with virtualized guests or two machines running native?"