From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jo=EBl?= Bourquard Subject: Re: What SATA controller for software raid and/or lvm? Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 20:50:07 +0100 Sender: linux-raid-owner@vger.kernel.org Message-ID: <1074541807.11253.33.camel@localhost.localdomain> References: Reply-To: numlock@freesurf.ch Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE Return-path: In-Reply-To: To: Mark Hahn Cc: mingz@ele.uri.edu, admin@ecommerce.com, linux-raid@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-raid.ids Mark, Thanks a lot for your answer... On Mon, 2004-01-19 at 20:19, Mark Hahn wrote: > > However, before I rush and order these two Highpoint 1820's ($300),= it >=20 > afaikt, HPT's driver is one that plugs into SCSI. this by itself doe= sn't > mean it's bad (since libata and 3ware also do so, and are good). the= problem > is that it's not clear how well HPT will maintain the driver, updatin= g it=20 > when the SCSI layers above it change (or the kernel in general). >=20 I understand your concerns about the future ! =46ortunately (at least for me) it won't matter much, because I don't n= eed top-notch software in the fileserver. Since we talk SCSI, is it still possible to monitor the S.M.A.R.T healt= h attributes of the SATA disks when plugged into one of these controllers= ? I'd be lost with 16 disks and no smartctl.. By the way, there's something I didn't grasp yet.. is libata a library which is needed for SATA drivers to run ? Or does libata rather mean "open-source SATA-to-SCSI driver" ? In the second case, with a HPT controller there would be no need for libata, correct ? > I'm going with promise 4-port cards: most server boards have two PCIX > buses, it gets painful to put more than 8 disks in a chassis anyway. > these days, a disk will do 70 MB/s, so expecting 560 MB/s out of a si= ngle=20 > card is probably over-optimistic anyway. >=20 Good point. With 8 disks, I'd have taken two 4-port controllers too. > > it might help a lot of people on Linux-RAID... I mean, a 64-bit 133= MHz > > SATA controller with 8 ports, for about $150 is really nice :-) >=20 > I don't mind two cheaper cards for the same thing. it's easy to argu= e > that you shouldn't have the controller as a single point of failure, = too. >=20 Indeed. Also if there are two arrays (I think it's needed because of th= e 2TB limit), one could split the work on the 2 controllers... and on the two PCI-X bridges :-) > regards, mark hahn. Regards Jo=C3=ABl - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" i= n the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html