Re: software RAID: ataraid(4) vs raidframe(4) ?

[Geert Hendrickx <ghen%telenet.be@localhost>]

On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 07:10:24PM +0100, Matthias Scheler wrote:
> 
> On 26 Aug 2008, at 12:56, Matthias Scheler wrote:
> 
> >On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 11:01:05AM +0200, Geert Hendrickx wrote:
> >>I've ordered a new desktop PC including an Intel ICH9R "fake RAID"
> >>controller[1] which, I think, is supported by our ataraid(4) driver.
> >
> >AFAIK it is *not* supported.
> >
> >The feature is called Intel Matrix RAID and Juan RP never finished the
> >work on his driver.
> 
> 
> An update on this:
> Juan RP has (almost) finished the work on this driver. It is however not
> in the NetBSD source tree yet.


Thanks Matthias.  Juan, could you give a status update on this?  I could
test, but my new PC will arrive today and I don't want to dump/restore it
too often after I've initially installed it. :-)

A few other remaining questions:

- how does ataraid(4) compare to raidframe(4) wrt. unclean shutdowns?  Does
  it need to do a complete parity rebuild, too?

- how do they compare performance-wise?

- can I monitor and administer an Intel ataraid card on-line (eg., is it
  supported by bioctl(8)), or do I need to reboot into the BIOS for that?
  (as said, FreeBSD's atacontrol(8) is quite extensive.)

Thanks for any info,

        Geert