Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 19:37:09 -0400 (EDT) From: Charles Sprickman <spork@bway.net> To: freebsd-scsi@freebsd.org Subject: 3Ware 9500SX vs. Old Fibre Channel Message-ID: <20060726191054.O61085@sporker.bway.net>
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Hi all, I'm looking for a little help on making a hardware decision here. I'm going to be upgrading an existing mail server and I have a certain amount of things on-hand. I essentially have two options as far as storage goes: -3Ware 9500SX 12 port RAID card -9 ~250MB SATA-II drives (to start - 1 as hot spare) -new 3U case w/12 hot-swap bays Total cost there is about $2200. The performance of the 3Ware/SATA solution is more than adequate for our needs... There are some reliability issues with SATA vs. SCSI/FC, but the drives are cheap enough that hot spares are an option to mitigate that. I've also been very happy with the reliability of the 3Ware management apps - no problems replacing drives without a reboot. I can't say the same for the Adaptec stuff so far. -FC RAID card -OR FC HBA, no RAID + gvinum -2 old NetApp FC shelves totalling ~0.5TB (have on-hand) -new 2U case Total cost there is about $700-$??? While I would like to use the freebie NetApp shelves, who knows how much life is left in them. I also am not too sure on what (if any) currently shipping FC RAID HBAs are supported well under FreeBSD 6.1. I do have a handful of the 9500SX cards which are outperforming most of my Adaptec SCSI RAID HBAs... I'm guessing a new FC RAID HBA is going to be upwards of $1K. Some interesting used Mylex product is available for a few hudred bucks, and I'd not be comfortable not having a spare laying around. Some have mentioned gvinum, but I'm wondering how rough it would be too set that up with 14 drives in a RAID 1+0 config. Anyone here doing that? Any opinions on these options? Thanks, Charles ___ Charles Sprickman NetEng/SysAdmin Bway.net - New York's Best Internet - www.bway.net spork@bway.net - 212.655.9344
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