Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller

[Ali]

> With modern hardware, it's easier, cheaper and more flexible to build
> and manage arrays in software, using modern filesystems such as ZFS,
> Btrfs, or MS Storage Spaces on Windows Server.

I have never used a SW RAID solution (except for a RAID 0 on Win2K3 for the boot drive) and have used HW controllers in my more recent systems (I am particular to the Areca Controllers - cheap but effective with a good feature mix). What I find problematic with RAID (specially RAID 6) is that with the larger drives we have in use today build (or more importantly rebuild/recovery) times are extremely long. Long enough that you could have a second drive failure during that time based on statistics. 

This is an article (for the layman) written in 2010 predicting the lack of usability of RAID 6 by 2019: www.zdnet.com/article/why-raid-6-stops-working-in-2019/. I found the math in it interesting and the conclusions pretty true to my experience. 

I am wondering if SW RAID is faster in rebuild times by now (using the full power of the multi-core processors) vs. a dedicated HW controller (even one with dual cores).

-Ali