Hardware vs Software Raid in RH 7.x

[John Lindinger]

Hello:

Anybody out there using the Mylex AcceleRAID  150, 200, or 250 in RedHat 7.x ?

I am setting up my SGI 1400 server with RedHat 7.0 or 7.1. The system has the Intel
SC450NX main board with the Symbios onboard SCSI controllers. The onboard SCSI
controllers are upgradable to Hardware RAID by installing an AcceleRAID card in PCI slot
B3

I want to implement RAID Level 1 (mirror) for the /boot and / partitions and RAID level 5
for the balance of my partitions.

If I use software RAID as described in the RedHat documents, it all seems easy enough.

If I spend $50 to $100 for the Mylex AcceleRAID 150, 200, or 250, then I can use hardware
RAID.  The RedHat hardware compatibility list refers me to...

     http://www.dandelion.com/Linux/DAC960.html

...for the Linux drivers.  

The dandelion docs say that the I must recompile the kernel, and if I want to boot from a
raid partition I must patch LILO & FDSIK. But it also says, 

  "Red Hat Linux 6.0 and SuSE Linux 6.1 include support 
  for Mylex PCI RAID controllers. Installing directly 
  onto a DAC960 may be problematic from other Linux 
  distributions until their installation utilities are 
  updated. "

Can anybody tell me from experience what I must do to use the hardware raid on RH 7. Is
all this recomiling and patching not needed for RedHat 7.X ???

Thanks,
John Lindinger
Nebraska City, NE

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