Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2006 23:17:56 -0600 From: "Kenneth D. Merry" <ken@kdm.org> To: "scottd@cloud9.net" <scottd@cloud9.net> Cc: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Re: High-availability storage Message-ID: <20060723051756.GA73979@nargothrond.kdm.org> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.63.0607222031330.4951@earl-grey.cloud9.net> References: <Pine.BSF.4.63.0607222031330.4951@earl-grey.cloud9.net>
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On Sat, Jul 22, 2006 at 20:53:49 -0400, scottd@cloud9.net wrote: > > Greetings, > > I'm looking for some information on high-availability direct-attached > storage with FreeBSD. To be specific, some form of RAID 6 with 12 to 16 > SATA drives (500 or 750GB). > > We have a 2TB NetApp filer, but will soon be outgrowing it. More NetApp > space would be nice, but it's expensive and not as dense (144 or 300GB > SCSI drives only) as other options. Given that FreeBSD now has snapshot > support, and dual parity disk setups are more common than a few years ago, > it's an attractive option. > > What's frustrating is that none of the external SATA controllers supported > by FreeBSD (Areca 1120ML, Adaptec 4805) have more than 128MB of cache. > Using SATA to Fibre Channel would be the next choice, with RAID 6 being > handled by the array itself (Nexsan SATABoy, for example) but FC support > on FreeBSD seems limited. > > Any thoughts? Thanks. If all you need is 12-16 disks, you could just get a PC enclosure that can handle 15 or so drives, like the Supermicro SC933T. Then you can use internal SATA cabling. I've got an Areca ARC-1260, and it works fine. (It comes standard with 256MB cache, you can upgrade it to 1GB.) FreeBSD's FC support works fairly well, and should certainly work well enough to connect to a Nexsan box. QLogic and LSI boards both work fairly well. (I've used 2Gbit boards from both vendors.) Ken -- Kenneth Merry ken@kdm.org
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