Date: Mon, 09 Apr 2012 16:32:17 -0400 From: "Dieter BSD" <dieterbsd@engineer.com> To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Re: PCI-X SATA (non HW-RAID) controller recommendation Message-ID: <20120409203219.155060@gmx.com>
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Moritz writes: >> Can you (or someone else for that matter) recommend any decent PCI-X >> controller for use in "serious environments" >> I heard Silicon Image cards are supposed to be good? > Just wondering, do you (or anyone else) know whether there are PCI-X > SATA controllers with only 4 Ports with less issues than the ones > already mentioned? :-) > > Maybe 4 are enough after all... What do you mean by "serious environments"? speed? reliability? harsh environment? support? other? I have the Silicon Image 3132 which is PCIe-x1 with 2 sata ports. Not as fast as it should be but fast enough for my needs. Works well with FreeBSD siis(4), which provides NCQ. Works well with the 3726 port multiplier. Talks to recent 600MB/s drives at 300MB/s, unlike JMB363 which doesn't like 600MB/s drives, even with the sata rev hint set. Look into the 3124 which has 4 ports and is IIRC PCI-X. Said to be faster than the 3132. You probably want to avoid the first generation Silicon Image sata chips. They are very slow and word is that FreeBSD doesn't support them very well. (NetBSD does have good support, but they are still very slow.) If you don't need ueber speed on multiple ports at once, port multipliers are a good way to get more ports. Issue: if a port has a problem (flaky disk or whatever), siis(4) may do a bunch of DELAY(big number) which interferes with other hardware doing real-time data logging, causing data to be lost. Unacceptable. Does not require power cycle though. I don't recall it even needing a reboot.
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