On Wed, Mar 20, 2002 at 12:47:47PM -0800, kml@selresearch.net wrote:
  | 
  | I'm interested in getting a CVS server and small web server put together
  | for work.  My boss would like to do hot-swappable hardware RAID, although
  | the actual load on either of the systems is likely to be fairly low, and 
  | we're unlikely to need more than 120GB or so of storage.  I'm much more 
  | interested in reliability and ease of configuration than raw performance.
  | 
  | What's the current state of the art with hardware RAID on NetBSD?
  | I've perused the release notes and the excellent web page describing
  | "PCI Hardware Supported by NetBSD", but I'm sort of curious about
  | those small details that aren't always obvious -- orphaned drivers,
  | obsolete hardware, etc.
  | 
  | I'll probably be running NetBSD-current on the system.

I've used the Adaptec 2100S SCSI RAID cards (iop driver), I'm using
the Adaptec 2400A IDE RAID cards (iop driver again) and the 3Ware
64xx IDE RAID cards (twe driver).  I have collegues using a lot of
the Adaptec (and their predecessors, the DPT SmartRAID cards) under
Linux too.

In my opinion, for ease of use, lower cost, and reliability the
2400A is the way to go.  The software support is excellent (you
can run the Linux management tools under Linux emulation).  If you
want hot plug, you'll need to investigate some form of hot-plug
bay for the IDE drives; they're available for ~ A$50-100 per drive
in Australia.   The 3Ware is faster in sequential I/O, but the
management software isn't as good and I feel the card is not as
stable.  Transactional I/O on the 2400A is excellent.

Luke.