8-port SATA PCI/PCIX adaptor

8-port SATA PCI/PCIX adaptor

[Max Waterman]

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempo-x_esata8.html

do you think this will work with Linux?

what about Linux on an Intel platform?

I wonder how it performs - esp. compared to the supermicro card 
http://supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/DAC-SATA-MV8.cfm which 
which is a fair bit cheaper at ~$99 and presents the ports internally. I 
know the Supermicro has a linux driver (they emailed it to me), but I 
haven't tried it.

Anyone tried these cards?

Max.

Re: 8-port SATA PCI/PCIX adaptor

[Mark Overmeer]

* Max Waterman (davidmaxwaterman@fastmail.co.uk) [050402 16:42]:
> http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempo-x_esata8.html
> do you think this will work with Linux?
> 
> what about Linux on an Intel platform?
> 
> I wonder how it performs - esp. compared to the supermicro card 
> http://supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/DAC-SATA-MV8.cfm which 
> which is a fair bit cheaper at ~$99 and presents the ports internally. I 
> know the Supermicro has a linux driver (they emailed it to me), but I 
> haven't tried it.

You may also take a look at new motherboards from (for instance) 
Asus which have already 8 SATA ports of their own.  I have one board
with 4 SATA on board, 4x300GB disks striped reaching over 200MB/s.

See http://usa.asus.com/prog/spec.asp?m=A8N-SLI%20Deluxe&langs=09
Anyone tried to use all 8 ports at the same time?
The less special hardware the better, IMO.
-- 
               MarkOv

------------------------------------------------------------------------
drs Mark A.C.J. Overmeer                                MARKOV Solutions
       Mark@Overmeer.net                          solutions@overmeer.net
http://Mark.Overmeer.net                   http://solutions.overmeer.net

Re: 8-port SATA PCI/PCIX adaptor

[Gordon Henderson]

On Sat, 2 Apr 2005, Max Waterman wrote:

> http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempo-x_esata8.html
>
> do you think this will work with Linux?
>
> what about Linux on an Intel platform?

Hard to tell without knowing the actual chip-set on-board.

> I wonder how it performs - esp. compared to the supermicro card
> http://supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/DAC-SATA-MV8.cfm which
> which is a fair bit cheaper at ~$99 and presents the ports internally. I
> know the Supermicro has a linux driver (they emailed it to me), but I
> haven't tried it.
>
> Anyone tried these cards?

What are you after? Card for internal drives, or external drives? If
Internal drives, unless you can identify the chipset, I'd avoid this card
and go for something else.

If external drives, then it's worth trying to find-out what the underlying
chip-set is.

Personally, if you have 8 external drives, I'd consider SCSI, just to
cut-down on the number of cables! (Although the cost of the drives might
well be a factor for you, as it is offten for me )-:

If internally, I'd go for a board that has open-source drivers. I've just
been trying the Highpoint 4-port card - no open source driver, and their
own supplied Linux driver is some 10-15% slower than another SATA card
(SII chipset) and didn't support SMART command pass-through.

If your motherboard has multiple PCI buses, you might want to look at 2 x
4-port cards which will probably improve performance somewhat if you can
get them on separate busses.

The cheaper cards that I've used seem to have mostly the SII chipset - and
that appears to be well supported by Linux. The 3112 is a dual-port card,
the 3114, quad. There are RAID and non-RAID variants, and all the ones
I've used seem to have a JBOD mode anyway (so you use s/w RAID rather than
their supplied h/w RAID) (The exception would seem to be the Dell/Adaptec
6-port SATA card I had recently - it has 3 x SII 3112 chips on it, and a
big Adaptec/Dell chip which hides them from bus )-:

Gordon

Re: 8-port SATA PCI/PCIX adaptor

[Matt Domsch]

On Sat, Apr 02, 2005 at 04:04:48PM +0100, Gordon Henderson wrote:
> The cheaper cards that I've used seem to have mostly the SII chipset - and
> that appears to be well supported by Linux. The 3112 is a dual-port card,
> the 3114, quad. There are RAID and non-RAID variants, and all the ones
> I've used seem to have a JBOD mode anyway (so you use s/w RAID rather than
> their supplied h/w RAID) (The exception would seem to be the Dell/Adaptec
> 6-port SATA card I had recently - it has 3 x SII 3112 chips on it, and a
> big Adaptec/Dell chip which hides them from bus )-:

The Dell CERC SATA 1.5/6ch cards use the standard aacraid driver, so
no worries about unavailable/closed-source drivers there.

Thanks,
Matt

-- 
Matt Domsch
Software Architect
Dell Linux Solutions linux.dell.com & www.dell.com/linux
Linux on Dell mailing lists @ http://lists.us.dell.com

Re: 8-port SATA PCI/PCIX adaptor

[Gordon Henderson]

On Sat, 2 Apr 2005, Matt Domsch wrote:

> On Sat, Apr 02, 2005 at 04:04:48PM +0100, Gordon Henderson wrote:
> > The cheaper cards that I've used seem to have mostly the SII chipset - and
> > that appears to be well supported by Linux. The 3112 is a dual-port card,
> > the 3114, quad. There are RAID and non-RAID variants, and all the ones
> > I've used seem to have a JBOD mode anyway (so you use s/w RAID rather than
> > their supplied h/w RAID) (The exception would seem to be the Dell/Adaptec
> > 6-port SATA card I had recently - it has 3 x SII 3112 chips on it, and a
> > big Adaptec/Dell chip which hides them from bus )-:
>
> The Dell CERC SATA 1.5/6ch cards use the standard aacraid driver, so
> no worries about unavailable/closed-source drivers there.

Ah, intersting. I must have a look at it one day. I got it in a free Dell
server I got when I ordered a bunch of other Dell stuff. I've no idea why
they included it, as the on-board SATA ports seem to work just as well. I
didn't really have time to play with it as the client wanted it online
sooner rather than later, so it's currently whirring away with the drives
on the on-board (Intel) controller using s/w RAID...

Cheers,

Gordon

Re: 8-port SATA PCI/PCIX adaptor

[Max Waterman]

Gordon Henderson wrote:
> On Sat, 2 Apr 2005, Max Waterman wrote:
>
>>I wonder how it performs - esp. compared to the supermicro card
>>http://supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/DAC-SATA-MV8.cfm which
>>which is a fair bit cheaper at ~$99 and presents the ports internally. I
>>know the Supermicro has a linux driver (they emailed it to me)

> If internally, I'd go for a board that has open-source drivers.

The supermicro board's drivers are open source.

Max.