New install using hardware raid 1 with Distro Stable-6.12.65

I am looking around for more information and I only found older information on older builds.

I have an adaptec 2020sa that is part of an older X6DHT-G 64 bit supermicro mobo. I am setting up a 298G Raid 1 container using two WD 320G sata II drives.

Will the latest distro install see the container as a drive and not storage media with meta data on it that I can only ignore or not use? Can I install with advanced install with no issue?

Will a raid 1 sata II 298G container write fast enough for a FPBX server that will have 200 extensions each having one trunk per extension? No IVR - logs and VM on another drive.

If I can successfully install FPBX (centos) on a hard R-1 can I also use the software raid included in the distro provided I have another drive to use?

I have one 500G and two 1TB drives for storage/raid. 4G of ecc reg pc2700 ram (which I am sure I will have to bump up - 32G is the max), 2 xeon 2.80G processors that equal 4 cores set for hyper threading, two G-port ethernet, and redundant PS.

I will be using a Dell 1550 server as a warm spare. I would be grateful for any links or direction to where I can find information about these questions. I will continue to look here and on Google - I will accept direct replies too :wink:

Thank you for all the great support you all give here and for the vast amounts of information listed here.
All the best,
Camel

IMHO you would be better off ditching that POS and use linux’ native software raid which I am sure will be easier to use and probably work better.

I have heard this about adaptec systems. I wonder if anyone has this type of setup or other hardware raid. Clearly, the appliances that schmooze offers are of the newest technology, what type of hardware raid do they use? Thanks for the heads up dicko. Your advice and honesty are much appreciated.

For a

you might want to consider a PERC controller, it is a real raid controller so you won’t need to worry about it in linux. Just monitor for failures before you get bit.

I have some perc’s from a 6450 and 2450. Hope they might fit and be compatible with the 1550.

I guess I need to install mdadm for software raid. Never used it before. I thought there may be something built into the distro but I don’t see anything.

I was wondering if I remove the 2020sa, would it be worth using any board with a SIL3124 for my Raid1 hardware solution. Just thinking about both side of the fence for raid, maybe it’s just not worth the hassle. As I mentioned, I am not familiar with mdadm. Installing it shortly.

Any thoughts?

If you use a PERC it will present the underlying OS a set of disks that reflect your hardware raid setup You can partition them inside the OS as you want.

It is up to you, choose a fake-array (SIL with all it’s restrictions that will IMHO, FU UP sooner or later)
a real hardware array (PERC)
or the software mdadm (yes, generally a built-in) based RAID which the distro can presumably handle.

Given those options, PERC is a no-brainer choice.