Why prefer Linux software RAID?
• Potential for increased hardware and software biodiversity • Kernel engineers have much greater ability to diagnose and fix problems, as opposed to a closed source firmware. This has often been a problem in the past, with hardware RAID. • Disk format is public • …thus, no vendor lock-in: Your data is not stored in a vendor-proprietary format. • A controller-independent, vendor-neutral layout means disks can be easily moved between controllers. Sometimes a complete backup+restore is required even when moving between hardware RAID models from the same vendor. • Eliminates single-points-of-failure (SPOF) compared to similar configurations of hardware RAID. • RAID5 XOR runs on host CPU, which practically guarantees that it is far faster than most hardware RAID microcontrollers. • RAID5 XOR speed increases as host CPU speeds increase. • RAID speed increases as host CPU count (multi-thread, multi-core) increases, following current market trends. • Cost. A CPU and memory upgrade is often
