From owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Apr 17 11:06:42 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A7C721065670 for ; Tue, 17 Apr 2012 11:06:42 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from mw@emile.cs.uni-saarland.de) Received: from triton.rz.uni-saarland.de (triton.rz.uni-saarland.de [134.96.7.25]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 22E508FC1F for ; Tue, 17 Apr 2012 11:06:41 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail.uni-sb.de (mail.uni-sb.de [134.96.7.230]) by triton.rz.uni-saarland.de (8.14.1/8.14.0) with ESMTP id q3HB6Ya3019711 for ; Tue, 17 Apr 2012 13:06:35 +0200 Received: from mail.cs.uni-saarland.de (mail.cs.uni-saarland.de [134.96.254.200]) by uni-sb.de (8.14.5/2011051800) with ESMTP id q3HB6S2e007651 for ; Tue, 17 Apr 2012 13:06:28 +0200 (CEST) Received: from dennis.cs.uni-saarland.de (dennis.cs.uni-saarland.de [134.96.243.128]) by mail.cs.uni-saarland.de (8.14.5/2011051800) with ESMTP id q3HB6RQ8023981 for ; Tue, 17 Apr 2012 13:06:27 +0200 (CEST) Received: from emile.cs.uni-saarland.de ([134.96.243.162]) by dennis.cs.uni-saarland.de with esmtps (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.77 (FreeBSD)) (envelope-from ) id 1SK6Et-0007By-La for freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org; Tue, 17 Apr 2012 13:06:27 +0200 Received: from mw by emile.cs.uni-saarland.de with local (Exim 4.76) (envelope-from ) id 1SK6Et-0007ww-Ep for freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org; Tue, 17 Apr 2012 13:06:27 +0200 Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2012 13:06:27 +0200 From: Moritz Wilhelmy To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Message-ID: <20120417110627.GE22863@emile.cs.uni-saarland.de> References: <20120409203219.155060@gmx.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit In-Reply-To: <20120409203219.155060@gmx.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) X-DCC-wuwien-Metrics: mail.cs.uni-saarland.de; whitelist X-Greylist: Sender IP whitelisted, not delayed by milter-greylist-3.0 (triton.rz.uni-saarland.de [134.96.7.25]); Tue, 17 Apr 2012 13:06:35 +0200 (CEST) X-AntiVirus: checked by AntiVir MailGate (version: 2.1.2-14; AVE: 7.9.10.48; VDF: 7.11.27.198; host: AntiVir3) Subject: Re: PCI-X SATA (non HW-RAID) controller recommendation X-BeenThere: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: General discussion of FreeBSD hardware List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2012 11:06:42 -0000 Hi again, First off, sorry for the huge delay. On Mon, Apr 09, 2012 at 16:32:17 -0400, Dieter BSD wrote: > Moritz writes: > >> Can you (or someone else for that matter) recommend any decent PCI-X > >> controller for use in "serious environments" > > >> I heard Silicon Image cards are supposed to be good? > > > Just wondering, do you (or anyone else) know whether there are PCI-X > > SATA controllers with only 4 Ports with less issues than the ones > > already mentioned? :-) > > > > Maybe 4 are enough after all... > > What do you mean by "serious environments"? > > speed? reliability? harsh environment? support? other? Reliability sounds good.. So having SMART work is probably a good idea too :-) I won't hotplug disks all the time, so rebooting once in a while when a disk dies should not be an issue. This is going to be the SATA controller for an NFS Server which stores E-Mails and User home directories. Since network will probably be the bottleneck, speed is not as important as reliability. Vendor-Support is not that important, as long as the card is well-supported by FreeBSD. I also found Exys EX-3403, which is an 8-port SATA PCI-X card with a Marvell MV88SX6081 for about 100€, but the Exys apparently only Supports Windows - which shouldn't matter if at least the Chip is supported by FreeBSD, no? According to earlier posts to this list (Hello Stephane :-), this Chip works at least on 7.2. Can someone tell me more about it? > I have the Silicon Image 3132 which is PCIe-x1 with 2 sata ports. > Not as fast as it should be but fast enough for my needs. > Works well with FreeBSD siis(4), which provides NCQ. > Works well with the 3726 port multiplier. Talks to recent > 600MB/s drives at 300MB/s, unlike JMB363 which doesn't like > 600MB/s drives, even with the sata rev hint set. 300MB/s should be enough. > Look into the 3124 which has 4 ports and is IIRC PCI-X. > Said to be faster than the 3132. I'll take another look around. > You probably want to avoid the first generation Silicon Image > sata chips. They are very slow and word is that FreeBSD doesn't > support them very well. (NetBSD does have good support, but they > are still very slow.) Noted, thanks for the hint. > If you don't need ueber speed on multiple ports at once, > port multipliers are a good way to get more ports. Sounds useful, thanks. > Issue: if a port has a problem (flaky disk or whatever), siis(4) may > do a bunch of DELAY(big number) which interferes with other hardware > doing real-time data logging, causing data to be lost. Unacceptable. > Does not require power cycle though. I don't recall it even needing > a reboot. That doesn't sound good, but I guess somebody can tell me the issues of any controller or driver that comes up in this discussion. If you're OK with siis despite this, I should too. Sorry for being quite verbose on this list, but I believe in ruling out bad choices before actually buying hardware ;) Thanks, Moritz