Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 13:35:06 -0500 From: Boris Kochergin <spawk@acm.poly.edu> To: Dan Langille <dan@langille.org> Cc: "Peter C. Lai" <peter@simons-rock.edu>, Charles Sprickman <spork@bway.net>, FreeBSD Stable <freebsd-stable@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: hardware for home use large storage Message-ID: <4B72FC5A.5030100@acm.poly.edu> In-Reply-To: <4B723609.8010802@langille.org> References: <4B6F9A8D.4050907@langille.org> <alpine.OSX.2.00.1002090103520.982@hotlap.local> <4B71490B.6030602@langille.org> <20100209161817.GI4648@cesium.hyperfine.info> <4B718EBB.6080709@acm.poly.edu> <4B723609.8010802@langille.org>
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Dan Langille wrote: > Boris Kochergin wrote: >> Peter C. Lai wrote: >>> On 2010-02-09 06:37:47AM -0500, Dan Langille wrote: >>> >>>> Charles Sprickman wrote: >>>> >>>>> On Mon, 8 Feb 2010, Dan Langille wrote: >>>>> Also, it seems like >>>>> people who use zfs (or gmirror + gstripe) generally end up buying >>>>> pricey hardware raid cards for compatibility reasons. There seem >>>>> to be no decent add-on SATA cards that play nice with FreeBSD >>>>> other than that weird supermicro card that has to be physically >>>>> hacked about to fit. >>>>> >>> >>> Mostly only because certain cards have issues w/shoddy JBOD >>> implementation. Some cards (most notably ones like Adaptec 2610A >>> which was rebranded by Dell as the "CERC SATA 1.5/6ch" back in the >>> day) won't let you run the drives in passthrough mode and seem to >>> all want to stick their grubby little RAID paws into your JBOD setup >>> (i.e. the only way to have minimal >>> participation from the "hardware" RAID is to set each disk as its >>> own RAID-0/volume in the controller BIOS) which then cascades into >>> issues with SMART, AHCI, "triple caching"/write reordering, etc on >>> the FreeBSD side (the controller's own craptastic cache, ZFS vdev >>> cache, vmm/app cache, oh my!). So *some* people go with something >>> tried-and-true (basically bordering on server-level cards that let >>> you ditch any BIOS type of RAID config and present the raw disk >>> devices to the kernel) >> As someone else has mentioned, recent SiL stuff works well. I have >> multiple >> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132008 cards >> servicing RAID-Z2 and GEOM_RAID3 arrays on 8.0-RELEASE and 8.0-STABLE >> machines using both the old ata(4) driver and ATA_CAM. Don't let the >> RAID label scare you--that stuff is off by default and the controller >> just presents the disks to the operating system. Hot swap works. I >> haven't had the time to try the siis(4) driver for them, which would >> result in better performance. > > That's a really good price. :) > > If needed, I could host all eight SATA drives for $160, much cheaper > than any of the other RAID cards I've seen. > > The issue then is finding a motherboard which has 4x PCI Express > slots. ;) If you want to go this route, I bought one a while ago so that I could stuff as many dual-port Gigabit Ethernet controllers into it as possible (it was a SPAN port replicator): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130136. Newegg doesn't carry it anymore, but if you can find it elsewhere, I can vouch for its stability: # uptime 1:20PM up 494 days, 5:23, 1 user, load averages: 0.05, 0.07, 0.05 In my setups with those Silicon Image cards, though, they serve as additional controllers, with the following onboard SATA controllers being used to provide most of the ports: SB600 (AMD/ATI) SB700 (AMD/ATI) ICH9 (Intel) 63XXESB2 (Intel) I haven't had any problems with any of them. -Boris
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