Tell me how your software RAID stands up to hundreds of concurrent users connecting to an IMAP service like cyrus with Horde webmail. Had a system like that years ago with good SCSI drives which had performance issues. Switched the system to new server with hardware RAID controller, performance was excellent. I think it's partially the better latency performance you get with dedicated RAID disk controllers.
Tell me how your software RAID stands up to hundreds of concurrent users connecting to an IMAP service like cyrus with Horde webmail.
I doubt the OP is going to have that on his personal NAS...:-)
As to the subject of your post, I would offer that for a hobby user it does matter and software RAID would be the better long-term option, with a well-known dedicated hardware RAID card as the alternative. Using HW RAID ties your configuration to that hardware. An enterprise user will have access to identical, or vendor-confirmed compatible, replacement hardware as part of their maintenance/service agreement, the hobby user won't. This will matter if/when the HW RAID controller or motherboard dies -- and won't be an issue if using SW RAID. As I've mentioned in another post, I wouldn't even consider using the on-board motherboard "HW" RAID as you're then tied to that motherboard -- which will be more of an issue if the MB dies or you want/need to upgrade the system as opposed to using a dedicated HW RAID controller, that can be moved to the new system, or SW RAID.
In any case, I think we agree, I just wanted to elaborate...
Hobby Linux user: doesn't matter, Enterprise: does (Score:2)
Re:Hobby Linux user: doesn't matter, Enterprise: d (Score:3)
Tell me how your software RAID stands up to hundreds of concurrent users connecting to an IMAP service like cyrus with Horde webmail.
I doubt the OP is going to have that on his personal NAS... :-)
As to the subject of your post, I would offer that for a hobby user it does matter and software RAID would be the better long-term option, with a well-known dedicated hardware RAID card as the alternative. Using HW RAID ties your configuration to that hardware. An enterprise user will have access to identical, or vendor-confirmed compatible, replacement hardware as part of their maintenance/service agreement, the hobby user won't. This will matter if/when the HW RAID controller or motherboard dies -- and won't be an issue if using SW RAID. As I've mentioned in another post, I wouldn't even consider using the on-board motherboard "HW" RAID as you're then tied to that motherboard -- which will be more of an issue if the MB dies or you want/need to upgrade the system as opposed to using a dedicated HW RAID controller, that can be moved to the new system, or SW RAID.
In any case, I think we agree, I just wanted to elaborate...