Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1999 17:25:23 -0400 (EDT) From: "Mark J. Taylor" <mtaylor@cybernet.com> To: Phillip Salzman <phill@cobia.gulf.net> Cc: freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: RE: RAID controllers Message-ID: <XFMail.990726172523.mtaylor@cybernet.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.4.10.9907260948080.626-100000@cobia.gulf.net>
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The SmartRaid IV is supported under FreeBSD, and the V is not.
We've tried them both under both FreeBSD 2.2.8 and 3.2.
(I think that DPT provides a RPM for their SmartRaid V card
for Linux.)
There is an "open issue" with the IV: put in the Cache/RAID5
controller module (necessary to do RAID), and your performance
DROPS TO NEARLY 220 kbytes/sec read performance. Ick.
We tried the SmartRaid IV on several different machines, with
different SCSI hard drives, same result: when you put in the
Cache/RAID5 module, the performance really drops.
From what I've gathered, the problem may be in the IRQ generation:
the controller generates about 1 IRQ per second during read
operations ('systat -vm 1'), which means that the driver is
either in poll mode, or the hardware is 'broken'.
We've been in contact with DPT (last week, as a matter of fact)
regarding this. They know about it, and don't have a work-
around.
-Mark Taylor
NetMAX Developer
mtaylor@cybernet.com
FreeBSD 3.2 based NetMAX is now available!
Linux 2.0.37/RedHat 5.2 based NetMAX is now available!
http://www.netmax.com/
On 26-Jul-99 Phillip Salzman wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I'm planning on deploying a massive squid cache in combination with
> the SkyCache satellite downlink. For this we decided that a RAID-5
> system would be almost completely necessary.
>
> After looking at the DPT SmartRAID IV controller, we were going to
> purchase the PM3334UDW (low voltage differential). Oddly enough, DPT
> is no longer offering this controller. They seem to still have the
> regular PM3334UW, and the newer SmartRAID V.
>
> Does anyone know of a place that may still have the PM3334UDW in stock,
> or know the current status of the drivers for the SmartRAID V? I'd
> really really hate to be forced to install the alternative on the squid
> cache, Redtie, because of support reasons.
>
> Thanks in advance!
>
> ---
> Phillip Salzman
>
>
>
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