[PE1950] SW- or HW-RAID for MySQL?

[Tilmann.Boess at bifab.de]

Hello,

we need to replace an PE2500 (2* Pentium-III 1.4 GHz) running
Debian Sarge.   It runs a MySQL-database (about 10 GB size
total) and a server application (many subproceses, needs a lot
of memory and cpu power, about 100 GB data in big files).  Both
the MySQL-database and the server application only read data 
during normal operation.  I want to put the file data into our
SAN, but I am not decided yet what to do with the MySQL database.
If I put the MysQL database on the internal disks, what yields
the best performance?
- 2.5in-10krpm disks or 3.5in-15krpm disks?
- SW-RAID-1 or HW-RAID-1?
I suppose that SW-RAID should be at least as fast as HW-RAID
for our purpose, because the database is only read and not written.
(The performance when modifying the data is not so important.)
Therefore I want to spend our budget on cpu power and memory
instead of an internal RAID adapter.

>From the last postings in this list, I suppose that the actual
Linux kernels (2.6.17.x) contains drivers for both the internal
RAID-adapter and the internal SAS-adapter.  Is this correct or did
I get something wrong here?  We want to install Debian Sarge on
the new server.

--
   Dr. Tilmann Boess   (TeX: Tilmann B\"o\ss)
   e-mail: boess at bifab.de