Intel RST (aka Matrix RAID)

W

wastedtime

Just trying to find out how well RAID 5 with Intel ich6r (or any ich variant raid) works with the most current versions of FreeBSD. Just trying to find out the good and bad before I buy. Speed isn't my main concern here as reliability is more important to me. Any thoughts and opinions are welcome.

Brian
 
I was afraid of that. Then my question is what would be the ideal RAID 5 card? Preferably it would be a low profile 4 port SATA II and PCI Express 1x. I am assuming it would be a 3ware card.
 
Don't use any hardware or, worse, fakeraid cards. Just use software raid like gvinum or ZFS (RAIDZ). It's easy to set up and you have no hardware dependency. The disks can be spread across different controllers. Even different types (SATA - PATA).

If/When your RAID controller dies you will have a hard time trying to find a similar card that will be able to read the RAID set from the old controller. With today's processors performance of software RAID isn't the issue it used to be.
 
I will keep that open as a option but I am wanting to off-load as much as possible off the CPU. I will let you in on what I am needing this for. I currently have a IDS/IPS setup that I have been trying out using a 1.5Ghz Via C7 with 2 interfaces bridged between the boarder router and Internet connection. The main things I have running on it right now is OpenSSH (for ssh, and sftp), Bro and TCPDump(on occasion). I would like to extend that to a new computer that also has rotating packet capture and Snort running. It would also provide some wireless IDS capabilities through a span/monitor port off a switch. While it isn't real processor/hd intensive right now I have a feeling in the future it will be. Especially when I am querying the capture/logs. The max performance I am looking at for the capture would be about 50 Mbps. Another thing that bumps up performance would be the sftp transfer of those captures. I am trying to keep this a smaller/lower power unit for the stuff it has in it. That being said I am looking at a low end Intel i3 motherboard no bigger then a Micro ATX form factor. I am also looking at a Intel NIC with 4 Gigabit ports. I am also looking at using a 5.25" slot for 4 x 2.5" hard drive cage from ICY DOCK.
 
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