Reasons of preferring Linux software RAID
RAID Recovery - Reasons of preferring Linux software RAID
There are many reasons of using Linux software RAID:
1. Linux software RAID is very powerful for developed hardware as well as software biodiversity.
2. It helps eliminating SPOF that means single points of failure in comparison to similar configuration of hardware RAID
3. RAID 5 XOR speed increases with the host CPU speed
4. RAID 5 XOR can better run on host CPU, which assures faster performance than most hardware microcontroller.
5. As opposed to a closed source firmware, Kernel engineers are quite capable of identifying the problems. In past it was a big problem with hardware RAID.
6. Hardware RAID firmwares have very limited support lifetime. Updating is possible but only for older hardware. Moreover, the vendor might cease to exist.
7. Linux software RAID can share data across SCSI, ATA, iSCSI, SAN network and other block devices as well. On the contrary, hardware RAID cannot even span a single card.
8. There are many ATA-based hardware RAID solutions but they are incapable of managing disk lifetimes through SMART; even if they manage to identify SMART, it is in a non-standard way.
9. Linux support RAID 6; moreover, soon it will be able to support RAID 5E and RAID 6E.On the other hand, most hardware controllers do not support it.
10. Every hardware RAID contains different management interfaces as well as level of feature support.
11. Hardware RAID has a notorious history of bad firm wares infecting data, locking up and performing embarrassingly under load.
12. Hardware RAID features sets are upgradable with changing technologies, but software RAID feature sets are flexible that means upgraded features can easily be added.
13. Logging as well as error handling varies from vendor to vendor with hardware RAID.
