Date: Mon, 09 Aug 1999 14:12:20 -0400 From: Mike Tancsa <mike@sentex.net> To: "Kenneth D. Merry" <ken@kdm.org> Cc: scsi@freebsd.org, questions@freebsd.org Subject: External RAID boxes (was Re: AHC errors. Bad disk or bad firmware, or bug in driver ?) Message-ID: <3.0.5.32.19990809141220.01086510@staff.sentex.ca> In-Reply-To: <199908091728.LAA29302@panzer.kdm.org> References: <3.0.5.32.19990809130844.00eb8d50@staff.sentex.ca>
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At 11:28 AM 8/9/99 -0600, Kenneth D. Merry wrote: >Mike Tancsa wrote... >> >You would probably do a lot better if you went to 3.x/CAM. The new CAM >> >SCSI subsystem can generally handle unruly drives much better than the >> >old SCSI subsystem. (In fact, we used Quantum Atlas II's with bogus >> >firmware to test some of the error recovery code.) >> >> Thanks for having a look. I do plan to upgrade the box to 3.x/CAM. >> However, its a big busy box with a lot of users and services, so it will >> take us a bit. We are also looking at a Legacy external RAID box to deploy >> with this new server. Hmmm... While on the topic, what would you reccomend >> as an external RAID box ? The Legacy is about $5-6K USD which I guess is >> reasonable with 4 8gig drives. If anyone knows SCSI, I guess it would be >> you and Justin ;-) > >Yeah, I understand, it takes a while to upgrade. > >As far as RAID boxes, I'm not sure I would recommend anything, because I >don't have any direct experience with external RAID boxes. > >I will throw out a couple of things, though: > >- Charles Sprickman <spork@super-g.com> has had a fair bit of trouble with > multiple channels on a single CMD array. I'm not sure whether he is > still having problems. > >- On the other hand, Karl Denninger <karl@Denninger.Net>, has had good > success with CMD controllers. > >- ftp.cdrom.com uses a Mylex external RAID controller, and I think other > folks have gotten good results with them as well. For a small caveat > (i.e. you shouldn't normally run into this problem, but you could) see > my mail exchange with Joe Greco from early July. Just search for > "DAC960SX" and you should see it. The bug in question was a FreeBSD bug, > not really a bug with the controller. > >- I've seen various people mention other external RAID controllers on the > lists, but I can't remember which. I'd suggest looking through the > freebsd-scsi archives. > >I've never heard of a Legacy RAID box. Does the 5-6K include the drives or >not? And 8 gig drives? One thing you don't want to skimp on is drive >quality...most 8 gig SCSI drives I remember seeing are pretty low-end. I >would recommend sticking with high-end Seagate or IBM disks. The exact price was $4700 Canadian, and then they wanted to charge me about $900 CDN per Segate Medalist or $1000CDN for I think the IBM Deskstar. So I guess, ~6500 USD with 5 drives >You'll want something that does tagged queueing, and handles a reasonable >number of transactions. And, most importantly, you'll want a controller >without nasty firmware bugs. :) FreeBSD/CAM has a tendency to expose >problems that don't crop up as often in other OSes. Before making any commitments, I do plan to dejanews through as many threads as possible. The legacy (www.legacy.ca) box looks nice in that the warrentee is decent (overnight replacement from down the road from us for 3yrs), and the price seems nice. But stability is what I am looking for most of all. +-$1K at that range is not that critical.. stability is the key for me. I am not sure what I would end up paying for in the equiv. Mylex device. Thanks again for your input, I appriciate anything you can share on this topic. ---Mike ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mike Tancsa, tel 01.519.651.3400 Network Administrator, mike@sentex.net Sentex Communications www.sentex.net Cambridge, Ontario Canada To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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