Software or Hardware RAID?

Followed a link to OWC post on Software or Hardware RAID
blog.macsales.com/37868-tech-101-discuss...ac&APC=XLR8YourMac13

Thought folks who are thinking about including RAID in their system would like to review.

Personally I have several issues with the article.
First it makes it seem that a RAID should be part of a Back-up plan.

"…Fortunately, there is a wide range of great backup solutions to help protect your data. Another way to keep your data secure is through RAID. You can read much more about RAID and what it can do here."

I Totally disagree! RAID no matter what version, 1/5/6/10 should not be considered a back up. It does not maintain data over time and is easy to loose your work. Both RAID 1 and 5, overwrite data all the time. It is in fact easier to lose data using RAID than not.
Have separate back up solutions, more than one.

Second, the article is very lite on how Hardware RAIDS are totally dependent on the "Box" including the firmware and processor. While it goes into some detail, if your "box" fails for any reason, it will most likely ONLY be recoverable if you have an exact duplicate box or it MAY be recoverable by sending the "box" back to the manufacturer and if they still have the needed hardware, firmware, software to recreate the enclosure to transfer your drives. Time consuming, expensive and NOT guaranteed.
RAID 5 for example will help to recover data in case a "drive" fails, but not if the "box/enclosure" fails. Did I mention BU's?

Speed of a RAID is only important if you are pushing the limits of the needed bandwidth of what you are editing. This is mostly dependent on the resolution/format/codec/#of angles(multicam) and effects (maybe if effects are based off RAID not system drive). I/O port will also play a role in speed of external RAIDs devices.
Article covers some considerations for speeds of each software vs hardware. There are lots of speed tests of RAIDs and speed does vary with different systems. I find most forms of RAID can be fast enough, at least for 1080 HD MC projects. YMMV especially with 4K and up.

Another advantage of Software RAIDs over Hardware is Software RAIDs are very flexible in number of and type of drives that can be added to a RAID. Hardware RAID is totally dependent on enclosure capabilities.

Personally, I have always favored Software RAIDs. Lots of folks prefer Hardware.

Software RAID creation/management is supposed to be back in Sierra Disk Utility after being dropped in EC. Have not upgraded to Sierra yet so have no knowledge of DU. You can also create RAIDS in Terminal.

Slightly Off topic for a moment…
For those wondering about LumaForge's storage solutions, I'm guessing it is using a version of ZFS coupled with open NAS with some "Magic Sauce" thrown on top. (Hey if Apple can use the term, so will I) From what I can tell, this is not a RAID per se, but ZFS uses a form of "Node" system where additional drives can be added. It allows reads from multiple drives and writes new data as separate blocks, not overwriting data. (At least ZFS does)
ZFS short comings in the past had been slow write speed, but cheap RAM and Flash based drives have over come the bottle necks.
I am speculating here as I have not seen nor used a LumaForge unit. I am only commenting on this so people won't throw the LumaForge units in as RAIDs. They have some of the same advantages of RAID without the drawbacks. They should be incredibility data secure due to the way new data is written to disk while preserving old data, unlike RAIDs. (At least this is true if my speculation is correct) LumaForge has already demonstrated how many streams of data it can handle and it is amazing.
Someone from LumaForge would have to confirm of deny what I am guessing to be sure, or that I'm full of

"Another way to keep your data secure is through RAID." Not saying "another way to back up data, and the statement is true, it is "another way" to keep "data secure". The article goes on to talk about using RAID as a backup, not that RAID "is" a backup. That's how I read it, thought it was a really good article on the basics. I learned something from it, myself.