Initially the system would load from the controller chip, where it then hands the raid functionality off to the os driver. Even if you can still get replacement parts youll spend time, energy and money getting them shipped to you. Fakeraid is bad because it is inherently cheap and sold based on the assumption that they can dupe their customers. Generally speaking there is no significant performance difference at all between software raid and fake raid, as fake raid is moreorless software raid anyway. Ive been a happy user of a few software raid linux boxes for some time now, and ive been very pleased with them. Apr 21, 2018 i know the shortcomings of fakeraid vs true hardware raid. Windows software raid can boot on a raid 1 array, but not on raid 0 or raid 5. Because its made by some great folks in the linux community and it is a project in development so you can get lots of support and updates, though it is very stable and is used in many prod systems. Fakeraid is an odd animal that is truly raid, but is software raid pretending to be hardware raid. Anatomy of a hardware raid controller servethehome. It supports all popular raid levels and has adminstration tools to manage the raid. The ubuntu live cd installer doesnt support software raid, and the server and alternate cds only allow you to do raid levels 0, 1, and 5.
Onboard raid vs windows 10 raid speed test experiment youtube. May 30, 2017 up until windows 8, software raid in windows was a mess. Home forums linux forums howtorelated questions howto. Another major advantage of software raid is that one can get many advanced features with software raid, and the feature set may expand over time. Low profile cards are generally used in 2u systems, but can be found in larger systems also. How i learned to stop worrying and love software raid. It is fakeraid, but a class above the other fakes and much faster than any built in parity raid in windows. It is used to improve disk io performance and reliability of your server or workstation. Fortunately, it is easy to build a software raid 5 in windows 8. Ill explain the differences and why they matter below.
Discussion in howtorelated questions started by crushton, dec, 2005. This is one of the reasons i prefer software raid to fakeraid, but fakeraid still has some advantages. Its possible to make a windows raid 0 volume accessible on linux but its tricky. Hi everyone, if you recall our previous article hardware raid or software raid. The highpoint 2700 has a marvell 9445 raid processor on board. Fakeraid stores the raid container information in the hardwarefirmware, so that if another os comes along theres no need to tell it what containers exist.
Normal expansion cards tend to fit best in 3u and 4u systems. Ive seen super results with linux software raid, i also use that. Linux mdraid drivers can detect and use software raid arrays that use the intel matrix raid. Fakeraidhowto community help wiki ubuntu documentation.
Cloning fakeraid is possible with the all in one system rescue toolkit. You can tell that your controller is fakeraid because of the device name imsm intel matrix storage manager or something like that. Up until windows 8, software raid in windows was a mess. Jun, 2016 comparing hardware raid vs software raid setups deals with how the storage drives in a raid array connect to the motherboard in a server or pc, and the management of those drives. I know the shortcomings of fakeraid vs true hardware raid. However, ive been seeing lots of threads all over the place and have simply wondered, what are the known advantages of using onboard raid compared to a dedicated hardware raid card. You have to firstly tell your system to stop using the disk and then replace the disk. Ich10r vs jmb36x vs windows software raid anandtech. Jul 07, 2009 a redundant array of inexpensive disks raid allows high levels of storage reliability. Or you may have a host bus adapter fakeraid in which case you need dmraid instead of mdraid. Where that processing occurs can be important depending on the complexity of your raid setup. Fakeraid is still software driven, but that software works at the bios level, rather than the os. Menu amd raid on ryzen 19 november 2017 on linux, ryzen.
Dec 21, 2012 tech support scams are an industrywide issue where scammers trick you into paying for unnecessary technical support services. I personally suggest to set drives as ahci and use only linux mdadm. When i bought my motherboard, the asrock conroexfireesata2, one of the big selling points was an on board raid, however some research revealed that rather than being a true hardware raid controller, this was in fact more than likely what is know as fake raid. We can use full disks, or we can use same sized partitions on different sized drives. Since software raid is implemented by the user, the type of raid is easily known to the user. My first knowledge of using consumer drives in a raid scenario was this raid 1 software. Trying to find the best raid option with what i got, so i decided to test the speed difference between onboard raid and software raid in windows. Software raid vs fake raid on intel rste server fault. If youre only running one os, or youll only need your raid in one os, go for software raid. Fakeraid is software raid in essence, operationally there is very little difference since both use the cpu for checksumming etc. Raid redundant array of inexpensive disks or drives, or redundant array of independent disks is a data storage virtualization technology that combines multiple physical disk drive components into one or more logical units for the purposes of data redundancy, performance improvement, or both.
Software raid 1 using windows or hardware raid 1 using a raid controller. With software raid, its the software that does the formatting so you can move drives from a failing enclosure to a new one thats a different model, or from a different manufacturer, and still be able to access all your data. Windows 7 has arbitrary restrictions on the available raid levels, and it was impossible to create a level 5 raid without windows server. That said, linux software raid is more robust and better supported and. Mdraid is the traditional software raid stack on linux. I believe that todays kernels support the ich5r via fakeraid. Unlike hardware raid, fake raid does not present the array as a single logical disk to the os, so the os still needs to explicitly support fake raid.
Hdtune and any block level benchmark will not work on windows software raid. Many hypervisors, including vmware, do not offer software raid. I was fairly bored so i took 3 wd10eavs 1tb 5400rpm green drives and did assorted raid configurations with them for benchmarking. It has many of the faults of both hardware and software raids, but fewtonone of their benefits. The results are interesting, with unknown limitations coming out of the woodwork. I am also most proficient with linux software raid using mdadm. Jun, 2012 performance wise its software raid vs fake hw raid, i doubt the difference would be much. Mostly by the fact that one can rearrange the raid using a live cd and a.
Whilst the new code handling the raid io still runs in the kernel, devicemapper is generally. On the other hand, i believe there is a third raid type. When changing mother boardcpu can a raid card, hardware raidsoftware raidfakeraid be implemented into the new machine without data loss using raid 5 or 10. The real difference between them is that fakeraid uses a metadata format that is tied to the raid. Softraids software raid system for mac protects your files from sudden disk failure, constantly monitors and tests disks for reliability, and to ensure they arent failing or about to fail.
Fakeraid, also known as hostraid is provided without additional cost with many motherboards. Comparing hardware raid vs software raid setups deals with how the storage drives in a raid array connect to the motherboard in a server or pc, and the management of those drives. I also just found out the hard way that the sas6ir also only supports 2 raid containers. An example of migration not working using software raid would be if one were to take drobo drives and place them into another system without the proprietary raid implementation. Ich10r vs jmb36x vs windows software raid anandtech forums.
Cloning fakeraid is possible with the all in one system. Aug 28, 2017 fakeraid is a common and terrible way to sell what sounds great, but really has no viable use case in production. Although we still find most of the information in that article. Software raid is a type of raid implementation that utilizes operating systembased capabilities to construct and deliver raid services.
Replacing failed disk in the software raid is a bit more complex. If you plan to stick to intel though or ever want to dual boot linux probably use their raid would be my suggestion. This wiki describes how to get linux to see the raid as one disk and boot from it in the same way that windows will install on this type of device. I chose fakeraid for my desktop because it was a happy medium that would keep windows running in case of a hardware failure. Nov 19, 2017 menu amd raid on ryzen 19 november 2017 on linux, ryzen. I was researching fakeraid vs softwareos raid and this was quite useful. Aug 09, 2018 trying to find the best raid option with what i got, so i decided to test the speed difference between onboard raid and software raid in windows. Does fake raid offer any advantage over software raid. So it really just comes down to software raid 5 vs software raid 1. Learn about what fakeraid is and why you should avoid it. Are you going to be using software raid of some sort, hardware raid, motherboard fakeraid etc for the most part sshds dont really provide increased performance over standard hdds as the raid controller cache will hold the same data as the sshd ssd cache anyway. How to create a software raid 5 in linux mint ubuntu. How to set up software raid 0 for windows and linux pc gamer.
Oct 26, 2017 that said, linux software raid is more robust and better supported and thus, recommended over fakeraid if you do not need to dual boot with windows. So could i do a software raid 5 of 18 tb total 3x 6 tb. Fakeraid which is a hardware device that pretends to be hardware raid when the raid. Onboard raid vs windows 10 raid speed test experiment. However, discerning between fakeraid and true hardware raid can be more difficult. How to set up raid 10 in windows 8 and linux pc gamer. Linux people call it fakeraid since its fake hardware raid. Fakeraid is a combination of a specialty system driver and a modified drive controller chip.
Lvm also supports raid through standard lvm tools that run in userspace. Despite the terminology, fake raid via dmraid is a robust software raid implementation that offers a solid system to mirror or stripe data across multiple disks with negligible overhead for any modern system. Instead of using motherboard raid to create a raid1 array can i present two vanilla hard drives to esx and then present mirrored storage to vms. Software raid stores the raid container information within the drives, so that if the drives are moved to other hardware theres no need to tell it what containers exist. Back when all of our server storage was on scsi disks, i used to be pretty particular about using good. May 30, 2015 hardware raid vs software raid which is better. My experience with hardware and fake hardware raid is that as long as you stay with the same vendor, the raid metadata will be recognized ive seen this when moving drives between various hp, areca and lsi hardware raid controllers, and with intel, amd and even via hostraid i was pretty surprised when i connected a 250gb hard drive from some old amd desktop box to a hp g1 microserver, and. The highpoint 2700 series are extremely low end to be sure but fake raid isnt about low or high end, it is about intentionally faking being hardware when really being software raid.
Some raid controllers are fullheight while others are low profile. We just need to remember that the smallest of the hdds or partitions dictates the arrays capacity. The pcb of a hardware raid controller is an oftenoverlooked component to the equation. Also those raid controllers that can be had for peanuts are often fakeraid. What is the difference between hardware, software, and. Generally speaking there is no significant performance difference at all between software raid and fake raid, as fake raid is moreorless software raid. Software raid is easier to move around from server to. Fake raid is nothing more than a software raid done via a proprietary binary driverblob. Fakeraid is a common and terrible way to sell what sounds great, but really has no viable use case in production. For software raid i used the linux kernel software raid functionality of a system running 64bit fedora 9. Unfortunately, most fakeraid solutions are the worst of both worlds.
The reason is that if you move your drives to whatever other server, you. Our take on the great religious debate, we made the case that hardware raid served virtually no purpose, and software raid was better in all important ways. In many cases it will be marketed as chipset raid to make it sound like hardware raid without really saying it. You can help protect yourself from scammers by verifying that the contact is a microsoft agent or microsoft employee and that the phone number is an official microsoft global customer service number. Performance wise its software raid vs fake hw raid, i doubt the difference would be much. Apr 28, 2017 how to create a software raid 5 on linux.
Windows software raid vs hardware raid ars technica. Differences between hardware raid, hbas, and software raid. Users generally refer to fakeraid when referring to products such as the intel ich10r, amd sb850, and various marvell products as another example where raid mirroring, striping, and parity calculations occur through software powered by the host systems cpu. It is fakeraid, but a class above the other fakes and much faster than any built in parity raid. A raid can be deployed using both software and hardware. I get that you use linux a lot, but dont dis windowsbased systems as fakeraid has a lot to offer for most nonadvanced users who dont want to go through the trouble of setting up software raid, whether it be through windows or linux. What is the difference between hardware, software, and fakeraid. Windows 8 comes with everything you need to use software raid, while the linux package mdadm is listed. We just went to add 2 more hard drives and create a third raid 1 container and found out that the sas6ir controller can only add the extra drives as hot swap failovers. Do either of them allow you to move the drive to another computer. Can you software raid storage presented to the hypervisor. Hardware raid is a lot like the big brother of fake raid, nothing is worse besides the price and a few things are better, but still lacks a number of features that software raid has. Fakeraid ends up being the worst possible scenario for raid because it comes with all of the normal caveats of software raid, adds in the obvious problems caused by confusion and misunderstanding by the system administrators and has to do poor techniques in order to hide itself as a system driver which is the worst model for software raid. Raid 10 is the fastest raid level that also has good redundancy too.
Mostly by the fact that one can rearrange the raid using a live cd and a computer with enough sata ports. Hardware raid will cost more, but it will also be free of software raid s. With all that said, here are my recommendations for making software raid work in debian on a system with a fakeraid controller. So i was disappointed that ubuntu didnt have it as a option for my new file server. But the real question is whether you should use a hardware raid solution or a software raid solution. Windows software raid vs hardware raid 10 posts arlesterc. Older software raid like md and raid in diskmgmt, is worse than hardware raid. I have an adaptec 1220sa 2 port sata raid controller and 2 seagate drives which im going to use in my home server in raid1. I know what advantages there are for buying into and setting up a hardware based storage array using raid technology. Choosing between software raid and hardware raid depends on what you need to do and cost. As stated, manufacturers often incorrectly distinguish these two types of raid and false advertising is always possible.
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