From owner-freebsd-stable Fri Apr 28 5:11:21 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from iapetus.salford.ac.uk (iapetus.salford.ac.uk [146.87.255.98]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 6DCEF37B6AB for ; Fri, 28 Apr 2000 05:11:16 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from M.S.Powell@salford.ac.uk) Received: (qmail 93638 invoked by alias); 28 Apr 2000 12:11:14 -0000 Received: (qmail 93632 invoked from network); 28 Apr 2000 12:11:14 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO plato.salford.ac.uk) (146.87.255.76) by iapetus.salford.ac.uk with SMTP; 28 Apr 2000 12:11:14 -0000 Received: (qmail 36280 invoked by uid 141); 28 Apr 2000 12:11:14 -0000 Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2000 13:11:14 +0100 (BST) From: Mark Powell To: Mike Tancsa Cc: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: How good is AMI MegaRAID support? In-Reply-To: <4.2.2.20000428074518.03404fa0@mail.sentex.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Fri, 28 Apr 2000, Mike Tancsa wrote: > At 12:22 PM 4/28/2000 +0100, Mark Powell wrote: > >As the DPT SmartRAID IV controllers are now obsolete, what's the best bet > >for hardware RAID under FreeBSD? From a bit of reading the AMI > >controllers seem to be well featured and regarded. Just how good is the > >support for these controllers in 4.0R? I'm trying to hold off using 4.x on > >any servers until I've used 4.0R for a while to become familiar with it > >and more specifically until 4.1R is released. > > If you are using 3.x you might as well start using 4.x in production, as it > is as stable if not more as the 3.x branch was/is. As for RAID support, I > would say take a look at the Mylex cards. In comparing two older models > (the AMI 428 vs the DAC960P/PD) the found the performance differences > minor, if not insignificant. Similarly, the feature set is not *that* > different and might be irrelevant for you-- Especially if all you want is > RAID 0,1,5 ) Yep, 0,1,5,10 and 50 are the only levels we may require. Some sort of FBSD management utility would be useful, although unlikely? Feedback from the driver regarding array status would be very useful. The DPT driver lacked this, requiring you to be able to hear the controllers alarm. This is of course impractical with remotely based servers. > You might want to pick up a Mylex and a AMI off of E-Bay cheap and test > them out for your self. I already have an old DAC960 which I may test. However, I'd like others opinions. I'm sure more testing than I could ever hope to do has already been done. > I have been using 4.x for our internal Squid proxy > with great results. I didnt have problems with the AMI card, except that I > could artificially wedge it under high load. There have been new patches > to the driver, so its possible the problem has been fixed, but I havent had > time to test that. Does anyone on the list know if this has been fixed? > For us the plan is to replace our main production > servers with 4.x as soon as we have the time to do it with Mylex cards > where appropriate. Are you moving to the Mylex cards just because of the above problem, or something else? Cheers. Mark Powell - UNIX System Administrator - Clifford Whitworth Building A.I.S., University of Salford, Salford, Manchester, UK. Tel: +44 161 295 5936 Fax: +44 161 295 5888 www.pgp.com for PGP key M.S.Powell@salfrd.ac.uk (spell salford correctly to reply to me) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message