Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 15:42:29 +0100 From: Olaf Greve <o.greve@axis.nl> To: ray@redshift.com Cc: freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Hardware RAID support? Which controller best to use? Message-ID: <437DE855.4010006@axis.nl> In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.20051118060718.00d655b8@pop.redshift.com> References: <3.0.1.32.20051118060718.00d655b8@pop.redshift.com>
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Hi Ray, Nathan (and others via cc per list), First off: thanks a lot for your answers, they're definitly very helpful! I have forwarded the messages to the person who'll have to make the final call for ordering the hardware. I'm trying to get him towards ordering a 3Ware-Escalade 9500S-4 RAID controller (or possibly the -8 or -12 one). One thing which is of importance is that their budget may not allow for a really high end server, so they may have to decide to buy a semi high-end server. This then may result in them taking Athlons instead of Opterons, and it may result in a MoBo with 32-bits PCI slots instead of 64-bits PCI slots. Judging from the pictures of the 9500S it has a 64-bits PCI slot, but it looks like it might be compatible with the 32-bits slots as well (at a performance penalty, of course). Would you happen to know if that's indeed possible, or whether they'd better choose a different RAID controller? Regarding the MySQL versions and their settings: tnx for giving me enough comfort to indeed give heavy preference for the FreeBSD amd64 version. Will (source) installing the version from the ports do, or do you mean something else when you say that you compiled MySQL yourself? Regarding the benchmark results: I'd love to receive them. Can you perhaps send them off-list to me? Regarding W*nd*ws vs. FreeBSD: I love your remark; I wonder if the person I forwarded it to can laugh as loudly about it as I did. :D Finally regarding SCSI vs. SATA: > I've had far better luck using SATA over SCSI in the recent couple of years. > We have several machines setup using FreeBSD and 3Ware RAID 0+1 that routinely > run with no problems and uptimes of 200 to 300 days at a time. Very interesting to know. At present, I myself have a 754 socket AMD Athlon 64 3.2 GHz (IIRC), running FreeBSD 5.4 release AMD-64, with an Adaptec 2200S U320 SCSI RAID controller with 4 Maxtor Atlas 10KIV 36GB drives attached to it in RAID-10 mode. So far it works a charm (though I too had to effectively downgrade it to U160 due to the lack of 64-bits PCI slots, grrr). I hope it'll keep performing well (so far uptimes in the order magnitude you mention have been working fine for me as well on SCSI - Adaptec 2100S RAID set-ups in my (now) fall-back server, and ever after installing the AMD-64 one 34 days ago I haven't had to restart it so far)... Yet, it'll be interesting to keep an eye on the SATA RAID performance and costs. With such uptimes SATA will surely become (if it hasn't already become so, that is) a very good alternative for SCSI. Cheers! Olafo
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