From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Eyal Lebedinsky Subject: Re: What hardware for RAID5? (PCIe controller or fast onboard) Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2009 08:10:58 +1100 Message-ID: <49C16362.40006@eyal.emu.id.au> References: <200903181833.39469.Dexter.Filmore@gmx.de> <873adak6gt.fsf@frosties.localdomain> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <873adak6gt.fsf@frosties.localdomain> Sender: linux-raid-owner@vger.kernel.org To: linux-raid@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-raid.ids A word of caution. 6 on-board SATA is not always enough. It is often the case that using all will hit internal bandwidth limits. I find it common for 4 disks to be handled OK but 5 are too much. A simple test of 5 concurrent dd's will tell you if all disks are going full speed. Some time one combination of 5 out of 6 (or 8) on-board sockets will perform better than other and it is worth checking. Eyal Goswin von Brederlow wrote: > Dexter Filmore writes: > >> I want to upgrade server hardware here, currently I have 5 Samsungs (sATA II) >> sitting on the onboard controller of an Asus K8N-E Socket754 board. >> I guess the controller chips are both connected via PCI hence performance >> isn't really hot. >> >> Basically I need either a board with at least 6x sATA-II attached via PCIe or >> a "dumb" PCIe 4x or 8x controller card. >> >> Any recommendations? >> >> Dex > > Anything that is not pci. PCIe or PCI-X will both be way > faster. Server boards with 6x SATA-II onboard are hard to miss. And > any cheap PCIe/PCI-X controler will probably do. > > One important thing to think about is hotplug support. Do you need it > or not? > > Look for a board and then check out http://linux-ata.org/ for support. > > MfG > Goswin -- Eyal Lebedinsky (eyal@eyal.emu.id.au)