From owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Apr 4 15:46:45 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A258F1065672 for ; Wed, 4 Apr 2012 15:46:45 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from mw@emile.cs.uni-saarland.de) Received: from mail.uni-sb.de (mail.uni-sb.de [134.96.252.33]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3111C8FC08 for ; Wed, 4 Apr 2012 15:46:45 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail.cs.uni-saarland.de (mail.cs.uni-saarland.de [134.96.254.200]) by uni-sb.de (8.14.5/2011051800) with ESMTP id q34Fkf2F028691; Wed, 4 Apr 2012 17:46:41 +0200 (CEST) Received: from dennis.cs.uni-saarland.de (dennis.cs.uni-saarland.de [134.96.243.128]) by mail.cs.uni-saarland.de (8.14.5/2011051800) with ESMTP id q34Fke7W013714; Wed, 4 Apr 2012 17:46:40 +0200 (CEST) Received: from emile.cs.uni-saarland.de ([134.96.243.162]) by dennis.cs.uni-saarland.de with esmtps (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.77 (FreeBSD)) (envelope-from ) id 1SFSPw-0001Th-G6; Wed, 04 Apr 2012 17:46:40 +0200 Received: from mw by emile.cs.uni-saarland.de with local (Exim 4.76) (envelope-from ) id 1SFSPw-0007wE-8n; Wed, 04 Apr 2012 17:46:40 +0200 Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2012 17:46:40 +0200 From: Moritz Wilhelmy To: DarkSoul Message-ID: <20120404154639.GG18733@emile.cs.uni-saarland.de> References: <20120404135238.GF18733@emile.cs.uni-saarland.de> <4F7C59D8.8080406@darkbsd.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <4F7C59D8.8080406@darkbsd.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) X-DCC-dcc1.aftenposten.no-Metrics: mail.cs.uni-saarland.de; whitelist Cc: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Do you recommend Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 as PCI-X SATA controller? X-BeenThere: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: General discussion of FreeBSD hardware List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 04 Apr 2012 15:46:45 -0000 Hello, On Wed, Apr 04, 2012 at 23:25:28 +0900, DarkSoul wrote: > I used this card for my personal ZFS NAS (2 cards, 15 disks + 1 SSD). > > http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/AOC-SAT2-MV8.cfm > > Frankly speaking, this card will work 99% of the time. But it has a few > quirks : > - Sometimes, I've had a port drop because maybe of a broken/dying disk. > The port would NOT recover unless I cold rebooted the server. > And a port not recovering means, even the BIOS option ROM programming > won't find it. > Quite annoying as one could guess. > - I could panic a system by removing a drive (back in the 8.1-RELEASE > days) because of thread locking/sleeping issues. > - I don't know what is to blame for that but : > - I had more than once odd queue issues and disks flapping. Not really > a problem with ZFS but VERY irritating nonetheless. > - I even had a whole controller drop on me once. Nothing a reboot/zpool > scrub couldn't fix (with NO corruption to boot!) but still... > - It really, REALLY doesn't play nice with other cards. I tried > migrating progressively to mpt(4) cards, with a one by one switch, only > to experience stray NMIs and pretty ugly kernel panics. It turned out > having a "pure" system with two f the same kind (mind, I was not pairing > PCI-X and PCIe, this was in every case pure PCI-X setups) did wonders > for stability. > > It's probably fairly decent for most home purposes (my main use), > but I'd advise against it in any serious environment. Can you (or someone else for that matter) recommend any decent PCI-X controller for use in "serious environments", preferably with more than 4 Ports and in the same price category? :-) The setup is rather serious, but then again, I don't expect having to replace disks all the time (so if there isn't anything else that would cost about the same, I might just go with this one)... It affects about 30 users. I heard Silicon Image cards are supposed to be good? I don't need or want a hardware RAID-controller, because I'd prefer using software RAID (and don't want to waste the extra money). Best regards, Moritz