[rescue] Re: Hardware RAID on modern Sun equipment?

[Robert Rose]

At 01:14 AM 13/03/2002 -0600, you wrote:
> > > I'm trying to get a sense of what Sun's offering these days. As far as
> > > hardware RAID goes, what's out there? Do the Netras do RAID in 
> software on
> > > those IDE disks? How about the Ultras or the Enterprise series?

Not much at all really.  It's one of my current complaints with Sun (I'm 
hammering them with it at every opportunity) that the're losing business to 
Compaq/Dell/IBM/etc in the low-end server market because of it.  As a 
result, they're losing market share to NT (perception that Intel servers 
are best running NT), and they don't seem to realise it.

The Wintel market has been able to BOOT from hardware raid for what? 10 
years or so.  Sun had an excuse while they were pure S-bus (won't fit) but 
have absolutely NO excuse now that they're (almost) pure PCI.  Problem now 
is that Solaris sysadmins are so used to having to make do with Disksuite 
or struggling with Veritas, there is considerable inertia to overcome 
before they will even contemplate hardware raid, let alone accept it and 
recommend it to the suits.

> >
> > You can do software raid on any disks pretty much, using Solstice
> > Disksuite under Solaris.

And it "inhales deeply" compared to hardware raid.

> > For hardware RAID you're looking at an A1000 at the bottom of the line, or
> > something bigger (T3 array, or the really bigger stuff). There isn't
> > really any internal RAID on the Sun servers that I've been able to find.
> > Definitely nothing on the board like some of the PCs out there. It's all
> > going to be outside the box.

You can boot from an A1000.

>I don't know what the A1000 goes for, but you may also want to
>consider the SCSI to SCSI RAID controllers.  These are platform
>independent controllers that you hook SCSI drives up to.  They look
>like a single SCSI drive to your machine, and control the SCSI drives
>themselves.

Problem is that Sun will refuse you support if you use a third party raid 
box.  Been there, done that.

>I bought a 2 channel DAC960SX from Mylex on eBay - $88.  New
>controllers that do U160 or UW2 are about $1000 + for the device,
>though they usually have several distinct channels going out to the
>drives.

We should all hassle our Sun reps.  Tell them they've lost business to the 
Wintel market.  Tell them that if they make it, people will buy it.

That's probably enough ranting for one message, feel free to discuss with 
me privately if you disagree with anything I've said.

Rob.