From owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Sep 10 15:26:10 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 76B23106564A for ; Mon, 10 Sep 2012 15:26:10 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from vince@unsane.co.uk) Received: from unsane.co.uk (unsane-pt.tunnel.tserv5.lon1.ipv6.he.net [IPv6:2001:470:1f08:110::2]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C5F178FC08 for ; Mon, 10 Sep 2012 15:26:09 +0000 (UTC) Received: from vhoffman.lon.namesco.net (lon.namesco.net [195.7.254.102]) (authenticated bits=0) by unsane.co.uk (8.14.5/8.14.5) with ESMTP id q8AFQ8nU032393 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-CAMELLIA256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO); Mon, 10 Sep 2012 16:26:08 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from vince@unsane.co.uk) Message-ID: <504E0690.1020608@unsane.co.uk> Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2012 16:26:08 +0100 From: Vincent Hoffman User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:15.0) Gecko/20120824 Thunderbird/15.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Paul Schmehl References: <20120909095412.00005a47@unknown> <504DC680.30708@unsane.co.uk> In-Reply-To: X-Enigmail-Version: 1.4.4 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Content-Filtered-By: Mailman/MimeDel 2.1.5 Cc: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Dell Perc H200A 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: Mon, 10 Sep 2012 15:26:10 -0000 On 10/09/2012 15:39, Paul Schmehl wrote: > --On September 10, 2012 11:52:48 AM +0100 Vincent Hoffman > wrote: > >> If you are happy to use the integrated RAID (IR) mode and let the >> driver/card handle RAID then >> http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=231679 >> brought in support for this and >> http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=237876 >> a new version of the driver. >> A 9.1-RC1 install iso should pick it up fine. >> > > Thanks, VIncent. Does 8.3 also have the support? Just wondering in > case 9.1 RC1 is flaky on this particular box. svnweb says yes http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/releng/8.3/sys/dev/mps/mps.c?view=log > >> >> No idea if you want to use software RAID over JBOD (Just a bunch of >> disks) mode though. >> > > I would have thought hardware RAID would be better than software > RAID. No? > Hard to say here honestly. I've a few running as RAID under linux and they seem to perform well enough. However I know some people prefer using software RAID be it zfs or geom based RAID over hardware RAID. LSI decribes the LSI 9211 its based on as " 6Gb/s SATA+SAS HBA with PCIe 2.0 host interface and basic RAID" (they come under HBA on LSI's website not under RAID controllers.) Dell's info says the h200 has no onboard cache or battery backup unit. http://www.dell.com/content/topics/topic.aspx/global/products/pvaul/topics/en/us/raid_controller?c=us&l=en&cs=555 and that it disables the onboard cache on the drives (a good thing for data integrity bad for performance) http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/storage/Storlink/H200/en/UG/HTML/features.htm So the gain here is only really offloading the minimal CPU used for RAID management and that it gives you less admin overhead when changing disks (hotswap and go vs manually adding into software RAID) in this case. Vince