From owner-freebsd-proliant@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Feb 28 20:52:06 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-proliant@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-proliant@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 523AA16A420 for ; Tue, 28 Feb 2006 20:52:06 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from kama@pvp.se) Received: from ms1.as.pvp.se (dns.pvp.se [213.64.187.226]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E86DF43D46 for ; Tue, 28 Feb 2006 20:52:05 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from kama@pvp.se) Received: by ms1.as.pvp.se (Postfix, from userid 1001) id 642FAA9; Tue, 28 Feb 2006 21:55:00 +0100 (CET) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ms1.as.pvp.se (Postfix) with ESMTP id 62CF7A7; Tue, 28 Feb 2006 21:55:00 +0100 (CET) Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 21:55:00 +0100 (CET) From: kama X-X-Sender: kama@ns1.as.pvp.se To: nocturnal In-Reply-To: <43F5CC7F.7010304@swehack.se> Message-ID: <20060228212842.R33180@ns1.as.pvp.se> References: <43F5CC7F.7010304@swehack.se> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Cc: freebsd-proliant@freebsd.org Subject: Re: HP Proliant SATA RAID Cards for FreeBSD? X-BeenThere: freebsd-proliant@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Technical discussion of FreeBSD on HP ProLiant server platforms." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 20:52:06 -0000 On Fri, 17 Feb 2006, nocturnal wrote: > Hi > > I need to buy a server from a HP partner for a customer and we don't > need hardware RAID but we would prefer it. We do need SATA because of > budget restrictions. I'm new to hardware and i don't know much at all > about SATA or SATA RAID. I've had only bad experience with SATA RAID > cards using FreeBSD where disk writes timed out and made the system hang > repeatedly. > > They offer mainly Proliant machines and i'm wondering which cards you > guys have experience with working well on FreeBSD. We will be using > 6.0-RELEASE for the operatingsystem. We could also accept software RAID > if it comes to that, all we need to know is that it will work without > problems and be stable for a production environment. > > If any of you feel kind enough to recommend a machine for me then the > required specs are at least two cpu slots with one Intel Xeon processor > of at least 2.0GHz. At least 512MB ram and at least 40GB disks in > hardware raid of course. SCSI disks would be great if the price is right > but SATA disks are recommended because of limited ammounts of resources. > -- If your specifications of the machines are so low and disk io is not critical. You probably just need to buy yourself a moderate DL380. And fill it with disks. It have a decent integrated smart array card (SA6i) and you can choose between 36GB to 300GB disks... You will probably get 2*146GB for the price of one extra array controller. I've been using the DL380 with FreeBSD for aprox 5 years and are more than pleased with the stability and performance. The integrated SA6i is faster than the former cards. If you still want SATA have a look at these: http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/proliantstorage/sharedstorage/sacluster/msa20/ http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/proliantstorage/arraycontrollers/index.html If you go with a msa20 and a 6402 card, you are good to go... I dont know if the smart array sata controllers uses the ciss driver as the 6402 do. But this setup will cost you more than just buying scsi disks. /Bjorn