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Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 02:26:18 -0800
To: Michael VInce <mv@roq.com>,Steven Hartland <killing@multiplay.co.uk>
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Cc: freebsd-performance@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: SATA: RAID 5 controller recommendations
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At 09:17 PM 11/2/2005 +1100, Michael VInce wrote:
| For SATA I have always been getting the Dell 750s (now 850s) which use 
| the 'aac'
| Adaptec AdvancedRAID Controller driver, do 'man aac' for more details.
| Dell supply them with a 64meg cache and are hardware raid, I have always 
| just installed FreeBSD on them and only 1 hard drive comes up as RAID 
| should be.
| 
| I have only been ordering the machines in dual drive mirror 1 Raid, but 
| you could get a PowerEdge Tower servers like the 830 which do raid 5, I 
| never used one though.
| Alternatively all the Dell SCSI RAID systems have 256megs cache which 
| use the LSI Logic MegaRAID ( man amr )
| Stay away from the ultra low end SC1425 systems they have some kind of 
| software based raid.
| 
| The thing I have noticed is that if you compare other (often claiming to 
| be much cheaper) servers from other companies they often really skimp on 
| their hard drive subsystems with software based stuff claiming its RAID.
| 
| I used to be anti Dell and build my own U1 servers from case and up and 
| had a keen interest in cheap RAID technologies but I gave up a little 
| while ago.
| I believe Dell are great value when you consider their RAID 
| implementations and as long as you are happy with Intel chips.
| 
| Mike
| 
| Steven Hartland wrote:
| 
| > Anyone got any SATA RAID 5 controllers they can recommend
| > 64Bit PCIX.
| >
| >    Steve

Steve - 3ware is very good.

Mike - I have some benchmarks from a guy using a Dell with a raid and was
surprised to see how slow they were compared to our other hardware.  I didn't
run them myself, but the guy is on the list here some place.  I can send you a
copy of the spreadsheet if you want to look it over.

Ray