Re: Inexpensive RAID1 controller for home server?

[Roman Mamedov <rm@romanrm.ru>]

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On Sat, 18 Aug 2012 23:09:43 -0500
Stan Hoeppner <stan@hardwarefreak.com> wrote:

> On 8/18/2012 2:18 PM, Mark Knecht wrote:
> > Hi,
> >    I wonder if there is direct knowledge here about this controller?
> > 
> > http://www.amazon.com/HighPoint-Rocket-SATA-PCI-Express-Controller/dp/B002VEWBGO
> > 
> >    I'm looking to add an inexpensive 2-port controller for a home
> > server that's out of ports on the MB but has room in the chassis for a
> > couple more drives running RAID1. The machine has been successfully
> > running mdadm for the last couple of years and the power supply is
> > plenty big enough to take on the new hardware.
> > 
> >    According the the Highpoint site is has native Linux support so it
> > doesn't appear there are any major driver availability issues. The one
> > problem I've read about that concerns me is it may conflict with
> > existing on-board Marvell eSATA controllers which this machine has.
> 
> Given the potential Marvell conflict issue, go with Silicon Image:
> 
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815124027
> 
> All Silicon Image chips are supported in mainline, have been forever.
> 

Now, maybe I am missing something and Mark Knecht is your worst enemy --
because I see no other explanation why give him such a terrible advice.

Silicon Image chips are well known for having caused data corruption to many
people including in discussions on this list, usually this triggers when both
ports on the card are accessed at high speed in parallel.

There is also a performance-related reason to avoid Silicon Image (if
having them corrupt data isn't enough for someone):

  "Warning: the overall bottleneck of the PCIe link is 150-175MB/s, or
  75-88MB/s/port, but the chip has a 110-120MB/s bottleneck per port. So a
  single SATA device on a single port cannot fully use the 150-175MB/s by
  itself, it will be bottlenecked at 110-120MB/s."
 
   -- http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=10


Now, what to choose instead:

I highly doubt having two Marvell controllers in a system would lead to a
conflict; and as the article linked above concludes, a Marvell 88SE912x would
be an excellent choice, as it "supports PCIe gen2 [...] is also fully AHCI
compliant, in other words robust, well-designed, and virtually compatible with
all operating systems".

But if Mark believes there could be a conflict, and wants a non-Marvell
recommendation, I'd say take a look at a JMicron, which is also the second
recommendation in that article.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124047

-- 
With respect,
Roman

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Stallman had a printer,
with code he could not see.
So he began to tinker,
and set the software free."

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