[Slightly OT] Cheap 4-port PCI-E SATA card?

[Slightly OT] Cheap 4-port PCI-E SATA card?

[John Robinson]

Please could someone suggest a cheap PCI-E SATA card with 4 internal ports?

I currently have 6 motherboard SATA ports and a 5-drive hot-swap 
chassis, I am thinking of adding a second 5-drive hot-swap chassis to my 
case and would need another 4 SATA ports to drive it.

Other requirements: known to work with RHEL/CentOS 5 kernels, even if it 
means installing a driver with DKMS or whatever.

Doesn't have to be PCI-E x1 because I've a spare x8 (logical)/x16 
(physical) slot, but I don't know if anything cheap's going to be 
anything other than PCI-E x1. v2.0 (5GT/s) would be nice though.

Looking through my usual suppliers' listings, there are occasional cheap 
cards with one or several e-SATA ports, or considerably more expensive 
cards claiming to have RAID, but I don't want to spend more on a 4-port 
SATA card than I would on a motherboard.

Happy new year all!

Cheers,

John.

Re: [Slightly OT] Cheap 4-port PCI-E SATA card?

[Roman Mamedov]

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On Sun, 02 Jan 2011 21:11:19 +0000
John Robinson <john.robinson@anonymous.org.uk> wrote:

> Please could someone suggest a cheap PCI-E SATA card with 4 internal ports?

"Marvell 88SE6445 Raid 0,1,5,10 and JBOD", $60 at eBay: http://ur1.ca/2qa3t

"LSI SAS3041E-R 4-Port SAS/SATA Host Bus Adapter", $73 at DX:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.51317

Or if you meant 'cheap' as in $20-30 cheap, then there's no such (4-Port PCI-E)
thing, but you can easily get not one, but two 2-Port PCI-E x1 boards for that
price. If you go that route, make sure you get the JMB363 chip, unlike SiI3132
it has not been spotted having any data corruption issues AFAIK.

-- 
With respect,
Roman

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Re: [Slightly OT] Cheap 4-port PCI-E SATA card?

[John Robinson]

On 02/01/2011 22:31, Roman Mamedov wrote:
> On Sun, 02 Jan 2011 21:11:19 +0000
> John Robinson<john.robinson@anonymous.org.uk>  wrote:
>
>> Please could someone suggest a cheap PCI-E SATA card with 4 internal ports?
>
> "Marvell 88SE6445 Raid 0,1,5,10 and JBOD", $60 at eBay: http://ur1.ca/2qa3t

In the UK the best I've found is the Highpoint 2640x1 at £92 ex delivery 
and taxes, which at current exchange rates is $142. I'm slightly 
reluctant to buy a no-brand item direct from China.

> "LSI SAS3041E-R 4-Port SAS/SATA Host Bus Adapter", $73 at DX:
> http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.51317

£113 or $174 is the best I can find in the UK. I wonder if they ship 
internationally... their $73 is £48...

> Or if you meant 'cheap' as in $20-30 cheap, then there's no such (4-Port PCI-E)
> thing, but you can easily get not one, but two 2-Port PCI-E x1 boards for that
> price. If you go that route, make sure you get the JMB363 chip, unlike SiI3132
> it has not been spotted having any data corruption issues AFAIK.

Well, there are 4-port PCI cards in the £17-25 cheap range, so I had 
hoped there would be 4-port PCI-E cards in the £35-50 range, which is 
the ballpark for basic cheap motherboards with 4-6 SATA ports on them, 
but it's not generally true.

Anyway thanks for the help, I shall chase up DX and think on...

Cheers,

John.
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Re: [Slightly OT] Cheap 4-port PCI-E SATA card?

[Roman Mamedov]

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On Mon, 03 Jan 2011 15:11:34 +0000
John Robinson <john.robinson@anonymous.org.uk> wrote:

> > "LSI SAS3041E-R 4-Port SAS/SATA Host Bus Adapter", $73 at DX:
> > http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.51317
> 
> £113 or $174 is the best I can find in the UK. I wonder if they ship 
> internationally... their $73 is £48...

Any item on http://www.dealextreme.com/ is shipped for free to anywhere in the
world. Personally I have ordered some goods from there, all fine.

> Well, there are 4-port PCI cards in the £17-25 cheap range, so I had 
> hoped there would be 4-port PCI-E cards in the £35-50 range, which is 
> the ballpark for basic cheap motherboards with 4-6 SATA ports on them, 
> but it's not generally true.

Yes, for some reason there are no 4-Port PCI-E chips from Silicon Image,
JMicron or VIA, hence no inexpensive 4-Port PCI-E boards.

-- 
With respect,
Roman

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Re: [Slightly OT] Cheap 4-port PCI-E SATA card?

[Sven Eschenberg]

http://skinflint.co.uk/eu/a367722.html

I got one of those, still a little too expensive imho, but it does it's
job as expected.

In-kernel drivers seem to work well till now (used several 2.6.33.x and
following kernel versions without any problems so far).

Does have PCI-e x4 thus providing more bandwidth that the 4 connected
drives can achieve and should support FIS PMPs aswell.

lspci agrees on this: LnkSta: Speed 2.5GT/s, Width x4, TrErr- Train-
SlotClk+ DLActive- BWMgmt- ABWMgmt-.

/dev/md127:
 Timing O_DIRECT cached reads:   888 MB in  2.00 seconds = 443.38 MB/sec
 Timing O_DIRECT disk reads: 602 MB in  3.00 seconds = 200.40 MB/sec

Since I use a raid 6 setup on the four drives and reading from each member
drive's cache yiels roughly 220MB/sec the value of 440 MB/sec seems
reasonable. I don't have the chance right now to set up a stripeset of 4
drives to check if I could get around 800MB from their caches, but I did
achieve roughly 450 MB/sec from a SSD stripe I had connected. So I cannot
tell you what the upper limit of the card/chipset is there, but I found
the rates fair enough for my needs.

I couldn't find any UK Reseller for an equivalent board at a similiar low
price (unfortunately) - misco UK does have the following:

http://www.misco.co.uk/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=399329&Tab=2&NoMapp=0

Which is definately too expensive ... maybe you got better luck digging
for a card+reseller with that chipset.

Regards

-Sven




On Mon, January 3, 2011 16:11, John Robinson wrote:
> On 02/01/2011 22:31, Roman Mamedov wrote:
>> On Sun, 02 Jan 2011 21:11:19 +0000
>> John Robinson<john.robinson@anonymous.org.uk>  wrote:
>>
>>> Please could someone suggest a cheap PCI-E SATA card with 4 internal
>>> ports?
>>
>> "Marvell 88SE6445 Raid 0,1,5,10 and JBOD", $60 at eBay:
>> http://ur1.ca/2qa3t
>
> In the UK the best I've found is the Highpoint 2640x1 at £92 ex delivery
> and taxes, which at current exchange rates is $142. I'm slightly
> reluctant to buy a no-brand item direct from China.
>
>> "LSI SAS3041E-R 4-Port SAS/SATA Host Bus Adapter", $73 at DX:
>> http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.51317
>
> £113 or $174 is the best I can find in the UK. I wonder if they ship
> internationally... their $73 is £48...
>
>> Or if you meant 'cheap' as in $20-30 cheap, then there's no such (4-Port
>> PCI-E)
>> thing, but you can easily get not one, but two 2-Port PCI-E x1 boards
>> for that
>> price. If you go that route, make sure you get the JMB363 chip, unlike
>> SiI3132
>> it has not been spotted having any data corruption issues AFAIK.
>
> Well, there are 4-port PCI cards in the £17-25 cheap range, so I had
> hoped there would be 4-port PCI-E cards in the £35-50 range, which is
> the ballpark for basic cheap motherboards with 4-6 SATA ports on them,
> but it's not generally true.
>
> Anyway thanks for the help, I shall chase up DX and think on...
>
> Cheers,
>
> John.
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> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
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Re: [Slightly OT] Cheap 4-port PCI-E SATA card?

[Mark Knecht]

On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 1:11 PM, John Robinson
<john.robinson@anonymous.org.uk> wrote:
> Please could someone suggest a cheap PCI-E SATA card with 4 internal ports?
>
> I currently have 6 motherboard SATA ports and a 5-drive hot-swap chassis, I
> am thinking of adding a second 5-drive hot-swap chassis to my case and would
> need another 4 SATA ports to drive it.
>
> Other requirements: known to work with RHEL/CentOS 5 kernels, even if it
> means installing a driver with DKMS or whatever.
>
> Doesn't have to be PCI-E x1 because I've a spare x8 (logical)/x16 (physical)
> slot, but I don't know if anything cheap's going to be anything other than
> PCI-E x1. v2.0 (5GT/s) would be nice though.
>
> Looking through my usual suppliers' listings, there are occasional cheap
> cards with one or several e-SATA ports, or considerably more expensive cards
> claiming to have RAID, but I don't want to spend more on a 4-port SATA card
> than I would on a motherboard.
>
> Happy new year all!
>
> Cheers,
>
> John.
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>

If you're OK with SATA II then I found a couple at Newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132017&Tpk=SiliconImage%204-port


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816102065&cm_re=4-port_SATA_III-_-16-102-065-_-Product

Hope this helps,
Mark
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Re: [Slightly OT] Cheap 4-port PCI-E SATA card?

[John Robinson]

On 02/01/2011 22:41, Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 1:11 PM, John Robinson
> <john.robinson@anonymous.org.uk>  wrote:
>> Please could someone suggest a cheap PCI-E SATA card with 4 internal ports?
[...]
> If you're OK with SATA II then I found a couple at Newegg:
>
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132017&Tpk=SiliconImage%204-port
>
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816102065&cm_re=4-port_SATA_III-_-16-102-065-_-Product

Unfortunately they're both PCI, not PCI-E. I can find similar PCI cards 
for much cheapness (under £25) here, but not PCI-E :-(

Cheers,

John.
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Re: [Slightly OT] Cheap 4-port PCI-E SATA card?

[Mark Knecht]

On Mon, Jan 3, 2011 at 7:13 AM, John Robinson
<john.robinson@anonymous.org.uk> wrote:
<SNIP>
>
> Unfortunately they're both PCI, not PCI-E. I can find similar PCI cards for
> much cheapness (under £25) here, but not PCI-E :-(
>

My bad. Sorry.

I'm going to keep my eyes open for one of these 4-poprt SAS cards.
That might be interesting in a future machine.

- Mark
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Re: [Slightly OT] Cheap 4-port PCI-E SATA card?

[Matt Garman]

On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 3:11 PM, John Robinson
<john.robinson@anonymous.org.uk> wrote:
> Please could someone suggest a cheap PCI-E SATA card with 4 internal ports?
>
> I currently have 6 motherboard SATA ports and a 5-drive hot-swap chassis, I
> am thinking of adding a second 5-drive hot-swap chassis to my case and would
> need another 4 SATA ports to drive it.
>
> Other requirements: known to work with RHEL/CentOS 5 kernels, even if it
> means installing a driver with DKMS or whatever.

You can also get a SAS card, and an overpriced mini-SAS to SATA cable.
 The LSI SAS 1068e chip is quite common and well supported by Linux.
You can buy LSI-branded cards, or from another OEM that uses the same
chip.  Intel makes such a card, and I just read that IBM does as well,
the ServeRAID BR10i LSI SAS3082E-R.  Covered in detail here:

    http://www.servethehome.com/ibm-serveraid-br10i-lsi-sas3082e-r-pciexpress-sas-raid-controller/

Such a card will actually give you a total of eight SATA ports, but
you obviously don't have to use them all; you can get away with only
buying one of the SAS to 4-SATA port fanout cables.

I grabbed two of those IBM BR10i cards off of ebay for about $50.
Unfortunately, I didn't pay close attention to the listing, and mine
came without PCI brackets.  But so far I've tested one, and it works
just fine.

> Doesn't have to be PCI-E x1 because I've a spare x8 (logical)/x16 (physical)
> slot, but I don't know if anything cheap's going to be anything other than
> PCI-E x1. v2.0 (5GT/s) would be nice though.

If you're using a typical consumer-grade motherboard, watch out that
the PCIe slot supports things other than video cards.  For whatever
reason, particularly on micro-ATX boards, the PCIe x8/x16 slots often
won't work with anything other than video cards.  Trying to use
something else (e.g. a RAID card) will, at best, prohibit the machine
from booting, or at worst, cause very subtle random problems.

Re: [Slightly OT] Cheap 4-port PCI-E SATA card?

[John Robinson]

On 02/01/2011 23:04, Matt Garman wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 3:11 PM, John Robinson
> <john.robinson@anonymous.org.uk>  wrote:
>> Please could someone suggest a cheap PCI-E SATA card with 4 internal ports?
>>
>> I currently have 6 motherboard SATA ports and a 5-drive hot-swap chassis, I
>> am thinking of adding a second 5-drive hot-swap chassis to my case and would
>> need another 4 SATA ports to drive it.
>>
>> Other requirements: known to work with RHEL/CentOS 5 kernels, even if it
>> means installing a driver with DKMS or whatever.
>
> You can also get a SAS card, and an overpriced mini-SAS to SATA cable.
>   The LSI SAS 1068e chip is quite common and well supported by Linux.
> You can buy LSI-branded cards, or from another OEM that uses the same
> chip.  Intel makes such a card, and I just read that IBM does as well,
> the ServeRAID BR10i LSI SAS3082E-R.  Covered in detail here:
>
>      http://www.servethehome.com/ibm-serveraid-br10i-lsi-sas3082e-r-pciexpress-sas-raid-controller/
>
> Such a card will actually give you a total of eight SATA ports, but
> you obviously don't have to use them all; you can get away with only
> buying one of the SAS to 4-SATA port fanout cables.
>
> I grabbed two of those IBM BR10i cards off of ebay for about $50.
> Unfortunately, I didn't pay close attention to the listing, and mine
> came without PCI brackets.  But so far I've tested one, and it works
> just fine.

I've just had a look on eBay and the few there are don't have brackets 
in their pictures. But still, this is definitely an option, looks like I 
might be able to pick one up for about £50, which was pretty much the 
most I really wanted to spend. More like £60 by the time I've got the 
cable, but I would have another 4 spare SATA ports :-)

>> Doesn't have to be PCI-E x1 because I've a spare x8 (logical)/x16 (physical)
>> slot, but I don't know if anything cheap's going to be anything other than
>> PCI-E x1. v2.0 (5GT/s) would be nice though.
>
> If you're using a typical consumer-grade motherboard, watch out that
> the PCIe slot supports things other than video cards.  For whatever
> reason, particularly on micro-ATX boards, the PCIe x8/x16 slots often
> won't work with anything other than video cards.  Trying to use
> something else (e.g. a RAID card) will, at best, prohibit the machine
> from booting, or at worst, cause very subtle random problems.

It's an Asus P5Q Pro, Intel P45+ICH10R, a fairly boring basic 
workstation grade (not gaming) full ATX motherboard, and if it doesn't 
like having something other than a video card in its second x16 slot 
I'll start screaming at Asus.

Thanks for your advice!

Cheers,

John.
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Re: [Slightly OT] Cheap 4-port PCI-E SATA card?

[Justin Piszcz]

On Mon, 3 Jan 2011, John Robinson wrote:

> On 02/01/2011 23:04, Matt Garman wrote:
>> On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 3:11 PM, John Robinson
>> <john.robinson@anonymous.org.uk>  wrote:

Hi,

I have one of these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815158090

Works well (PCI-e 1.x), no problems.

Justin.

Re: [Slightly OT] Cheap 4-port PCI-E SATA card?

[Stan Hoeppner]

John Robinson put forth on 1/2/2011 3:11 PM:
> Please could someone suggest a cheap PCI-E SATA card with 4 internal ports?

In your situation, going the PMP route may be a better choice.  Read on.

> I currently have 6 motherboard SATA ports and a 5-drive hot-swap
> chassis, I am thinking of adding a second 5-drive hot-swap chassis to my
> case and would need another 4 SATA ports to drive it.
> 
> Other requirements: known to work with RHEL/CentOS 5 kernels, even if it
> means installing a driver with DKMS or whatever.
> 
> Doesn't have to be PCI-E x1 because I've a spare x8 (logical)/x16
> (physical) slot, but I don't know if anything cheap's going to be
> anything other than PCI-E x1. v2.0 (5GT/s) would be nice though.

Go with one or two of these SATA II port multipliers with 1 host
interface and 5 drive interfaces--perfect for a 10 drive setup with two
5 drive cages.

http://www.addonics.com/products/host_controller/ad5sapm.asp

http://www.buy.com/prod/addonics-ad5sapm-serial-ata-controller-5-x-7-pin-serial-ata-300-serial/q/loc/101/213272437.html

http://www.siliconimage.com/products/product.aspx?pid=32

If your mobo SATA ports support FIS based switching, this PMP will give
you 5 SATA II drive ports.  It doesn't use a PCI slot of any kind.  No
additional software required.  No kernel driver issues.  300MB/s is
sufficient for 5 drives in an mdraid setup isn't it?

When I use these I remove the slot bracket and mount the PCB directly to
my server chassis side wall using mobo type standoffs.  You may need to
drill a couple of holes in the chassis depending on where you decide to
mount it.  If you're not a mechanically inclined DIY type person, just
use the supplied mounting bracket.  This may deny access to an
underlying PCI slot though.  I prefer the more solid mount and having
all slots available.

Personally, were I in your shoes, how I would do this is to buy two of
these so I'd have identical IO paths for all 10 drives in both cages, 5
on each PMP.  Connect each PMP to a mobo SATA II connector (again,
assuming you have mobo PMP/FIS support), leaving 4 mobo SATA ports free
for other stuff.  It'll run you $124 to do it this way, but it's so much
cleaner than having an asymmetric setup of 5 dives on individual mobo
ports and the other 5 running on one mobo port through the PMP,
especially if you plan to have drives in each 5 drive cage within the
same mdraid device.

If your mobo ports don't support PMP/FIS switching, grab one of these
for $40: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124040
http://www.sybausa.com/productInfo.php?iid=979

SATA III
PCIe 2.0 x1 500MB/s
PMP FIS support
http://www.marvell.com/products/storage/storage_system_solutions/sata_controllers_pc_consumer/6_gbs_sata_raid_controller_88se91xx_product_brief.pdf

You're up to $165 now, and well worth it, esp if your mobo doesn't
support PMP/FIS.

Plug each PMP into this card.  Each 5 drive cage will be on a dedicated
IO path.  This setup will provide a combined 500MB/s of bandwidth (PCIe
x1 v2.0 limited) to the 10 disks which should be plenty for most
applications.  The driver for the Marvell chip is present in kernel
2.6.19 and later.  Considering that 2.6.19 is like 6 years old, I'd hope
your kernel is newer.

It may be a little more money than you were planning on spending, but
for little more than the cost of one hard drive, it's a really clean, no
hassle solution that you'll be happy with for some time.  One side
benefit is you free up all 6 mobo SATA ports for other uses.  Grab you a
40GB OCZ Vertex II for $100 off Newegg and plug it into one of the mobo
ports for use as a boot, system, log, temp drive.

I don't know your mobo model# or I'd have been able to give you more
concrete advice.  As someone else mentioned, some system boards don't
like x1 cards being plugged into their x8/x16 slots.  If this is the
case, I sure hope your mobo SATA chip supports PMP/FIS, as any x4/x8
SATA card that will work in such a finicky board is going to cost well
over $100 alone, and to get one that supports more than 4 drives will
likely be $200 or more and will have 2 mini SAS 8087 connectors, which
will drive your cable costs up.

-- 
Stan

Re: [Slightly OT] Cheap 4-port PCI-E SATA card?

[John Robinson]

On 03/01/2011 06:41, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
[...]
> Go with one or two of these SATA II port multipliers with 1 host
> interface and 5 drive interfaces--perfect for a 10 drive setup with two
> 5 drive cages.
>
> http://www.addonics.com/products/host_controller/ad5sapm.asp
>
> http://www.buy.com/prod/addonics-ad5sapm-serial-ata-controller-5-x-7-pin-serial-ata-300-serial/q/loc/101/213272437.html
>
> http://www.siliconimage.com/products/product.aspx?pid=32
>
> If your mobo SATA ports support FIS based switching, this PMP will give
> you 5 SATA II drive ports.  It doesn't use a PCI slot of any kind.  No
> additional software required.  No kernel driver issues.  300MB/s is
> sufficient for 5 drives in an mdraid setup isn't it?

For a backup array, yes, but I'm not sure it is for online storage. 
300MB/s is an absolute max and there's protocol overhead etc, but even 
if it's minimal we're still looking at no better than 50MB/s per drive, 
while the drives can manage 125MB/s these days.

I doubt my motherboard supports FIS PMPs. It's an Asus P5Q Pro, Intel 
P45+ICH10R, and I'm pretty sure the ICH10R doesn't support PMPs even if 
the original spec said it would.

There is a Marvell 88SE6121 SATA+IDE chip on there but it's currently in 
IDE-only mode for the DVD drive and even if I switched over to SATA mode 
and a SATA DVD drive that'd only give me one more SATA port. But it 
might work with a FIS PMP, I suppose.

> When I use these I remove the slot bracket and mount the PCB directly to
> my server chassis side wall using mobo type standoffs.  You may need to
> drill a couple of holes in the chassis depending on where you decide to
> mount it.  If you're not a mechanically inclined DIY type person, just
> use the supplied mounting bracket.  This may deny access to an
> underlying PCI slot though.  I prefer the more solid mount and having
> all slots available.

I'd do that too - no problems doing case mods here. I suppose it's 
possible the mounting holes might be able to be made to line up with 
some of the mounting holes on the side of the hot-swap chassis. On the 
other hand I might cheat and use the little plastic mounts with 
double-sided tape on their feet.

[...]
>   The driver for the Marvell chip is present in kernel
> 2.6.19 and later.  Considering that 2.6.19 is like 6 years old, I'd hope
> your kernel is newer.

It's kernel-2.6.18-194.26.1.el5 so it's stuffed full of backports and 
security updates, it's less than two months old. Yes, I have sata_mv, 
but several people have reported data corruption issues with some 
Marvell controllers - a bad interaction with SMART I think.

> It may be a little more money than you were planning on spending, but
> for little more than the cost of one hard drive

In this case I'm using consumer-level drives so they're about £40 ($60), 
so $165 is a bit rich for me, especially since it's potentially limited 
for throughput.

Nevertheless, thank you very much for taking the time for such a 
considered reply.

Cheers,

John.

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Re: [Slightly OT] Cheap 4-port PCI-E SATA card?

[Stan Hoeppner]

John Robinson put forth on 1/3/2011 10:00 AM:
> On 03/01/2011 06:41, Stan Hoeppner wrote:

>> http://www.addonics.com/products/host_controller/ad5sapm.asp
>> http://www.buy.com/prod/addonics-ad5sapm-serial-ata-controller-5-x-7-pin-serial-ata-300-serial/q/loc/101/213272437.html

>> If your mobo SATA ports support FIS based switching, this PMP will give
>> you 5 SATA II drive ports.  It doesn't use a PCI slot of any kind.  No
>> additional software required.  No kernel driver issues.  300MB/s is
>> sufficient for 5 drives in an mdraid setup isn't it?

> For a backup array, yes, but I'm not sure it is for online storage.
> 300MB/s is an absolute max and there's protocol overhead etc, but even
> if it's minimal we're still looking at no better than 50MB/s per drive,
> while the drives can manage 125MB/s these days.

When using PMPs one will always have less theoretical b/w per drive than
what that drive can push on paper with a streaming read.  Considering
that over 90% of real world workloads are random IO heavy, not
streaming, it's unlikely you'll ever run out of b/w using a PMP based
setup.  I haven't.

Also, as has been pointed out, you will be limited by PCIe x1 2.0 b/w
before you are limited by qty 2 SATA II ports:  500 MB/s for PCIe x1
rev2.0 versus 600MB/s for 2xSATA II links.  This is true whether you use
a 4 port PCIe rev 2.0 card with 4 direct attached SATA II drives or 10
drives with 2 PMPs.  You only have one PCIe slot.  To get more
bandwidth, you'll have to use an x4 or x8 card, which is way above your
stated price range.

> I doubt my motherboard supports FIS PMPs. It's an Asus P5Q Pro, Intel
> P45+ICH10R, and I'm pretty sure the ICH10R doesn't support PMPs even if
> the original spec said it would.

I just looked it up, and the ICH10R does _NOT_ support PMP.  Neither
does the onboard Silicon Image 5723 chip, which actually connects to the
southbridge via a SATA II port (stupid).

BTW, the P5Q Pro has 3 PCIe x1 slots and 2 PCIe x16/x8 slots, plus 2 PCI
slots.  You told us the only slot you have available is 1 PCIe x16/x8.
What is consuming the 3 PCIe x1 slots?  The PCIe x1 slot just North of
the top x16 slot should be free.  I'm guessing the other 2 are blocked
by your GPU cooler, correct?

Picture:
http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=qH6ZSEJ8EPY6HoNU&templete=2

Move your GPU card to the bottom x16 slot and you free up all 3 x1
slots.  This gives you a lot more options to get the solution you want
inexpensively.

> There is a Marvell 88SE6121 SATA+IDE chip on there but it's currently in
> IDE-only mode for the DVD drive and even if I switched over to SATA mode
> and a SATA DVD drive that'd only give me one more SATA port. But it
> might work with a FIS PMP, I suppose.

Originally I was going to propose a $20 Sil 3132 based 2 port card for
use with 2 of the Addonics PMPs, but all those I could find are PCIe rev
1 only, for only 250MB/s of b/w.  All of the SI SATA host controller
chips work perfectly with Silicon Image PMPs (3276 chip) and the kernel
drivers have no issues.  If you had two PCIe x1 slots available, using
two such cards with one PMP plugged into each would work very well
indeed.  This is what I do.  Your b/w would max at 500MB/s, but again,
this is more than sufficient for the vast majority of workloads.  Keep
in mind that this bandwidth is bidirectional, so you actually have 1GB/s
of throughput with reads and writes in flight simultaneously with
multi-user or multi-threaded workloads, especially with a deep NCQ buffer.

> I'd do that too - no problems doing case mods here. I suppose it's
> possible the mounting holes might be able to be made to line up with
> some of the mounting holes on the side of the hot-swap chassis. On the
> other hand I might cheat and use the little plastic mounts with
> double-sided tape on their feet.

Yeah, there are lots of possibilities for mounting these handy little
PMPs.  I've seen folks just put that really thick double sided foam tape
on the back side and stick them to an open spot on the bottom or side of
the chassis.

> [...]
>>   The driver for the Marvell chip is present in kernel
>> 2.6.19 and later.  Considering that 2.6.19 is like 6 years old, I'd hope
>> your kernel is newer.
> 
> It's kernel-2.6.18-194.26.1.el5 so it's stuffed full of backports and
> security updates, it's less than two months old. Yes, I have sata_mv,
> but several people have reported data corruption issues with some
> Marvell controllers - a bad interaction with SMART I think.

I recommended the Marvell based card strictly because it does PCIe x1
rev 2 for 500MB/s.  I only use the Silicon Image based cards, but I use
more than one if I have more than 4 drives in an array.  The cost comes
out the same at $40 as the Marvell card, but the SI route requires 2
PCIe slots, and you only have one.

>> It may be a little more money than you were planning on spending, but
>> for little more than the cost of one hard drive
> 
> In this case I'm using consumer-level drives so they're about £40 ($60),
> so $165 is a bit rich for me, especially since it's potentially limited
> for throughput.

Well, you've given us conflicting requirements that are impossible to
meet with any solution:

1.  Low cost
2.  Full b/w per drive
3.  Only one PCIe slot availiable

There is not a solution available to meet all of your criteria.  Either
you must spend more on the card to get all the SATA ports and b/w you
want, or you have to go the PMP route to lower costs, and sacrifice some
theoretical performance.

Below is probably the closest you will get to what you want but the
price is higher than what you've said you want to spend.  It'll give you
8 direct attach SAS/SATA II ports with a PCIe x4 interface:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115057
$149

But you'll have to buy 2 fanout cables:
http://www.satacables.com/sata_multilane_SAS_cables.html
FAN-OUT-20INCH4X
Which run $20 apiece, $40 total.  So you're up to just under $200.

Your most cost effective option for adding a 5 drive cage, by far, is
this:  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124032

But it's only PCIe x1 at 250MB/s.

> Nevertheless, thank you very much for taking the time for such a
> considered reply.

You're welcome.  I think you're finding yourself in that "I want to have
my cake, but eat it too" situation.  You can't get what you want at the
price point you want.

-- 
Stan
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Re: [Slightly OT] Cheap 4-port PCI-E SATA card?

[John Robinson]

On 03/01/2011 22:18, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
> John Robinson put forth on 1/3/2011 10:00 AM:
>> On 03/01/2011 06:41, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
[...]
> When using PMPs one will always have less theoretical b/w per drive than
> what that drive can push on paper with a streaming read.  Considering
> that over 90% of real world workloads are random IO heavy, not
> streaming, it's unlikely you'll ever run out of b/w using a PMP based
> setup.  I haven't.

That's probably true but I don't like making compromises if I can 
possibly avoid it :-)

>> I doubt my motherboard supports FIS PMPs. It's an Asus P5Q Pro, Intel
>> P45+ICH10R, and I'm pretty sure the ICH10R doesn't support PMPs even if
>> the original spec said it would.
>
> I just looked it up, and the ICH10R does _NOT_ support PMP.  Neither
> does the onboard Silicon Image 5723 chip, which actually connects to the
> southbridge via a SATA II port (stupid).

Must be connected to the Marvell 88SE6111's SATA port. Well, the spec 
says 88SE6111 but my lspci shows an 88SE6121. The 88SE6121 ought to have 
two SATA ports, but I've found odd behaviour with the two non-ICH10R 
ports on the board when testing - basically if I use the second port but 
not the first port, nothing appears, even with Asus' Drive Xpert 
disabled. This is presumably the SilI 5723's contribution, hanging off 
the Marvell chip's SATA port, and clearly no use for RAID where a drive 
might die but we want to carry on, so I'll be ignoring the on-board 
Marvell/SilI stuff.

> BTW, the P5Q Pro has 3 PCIe x1 slots and 2 PCIe x16/x8 slots, plus 2 PCI
> slots.  You told us the only slot you have available is 1 PCIe x16/x8.
> What is consuming the 3 PCIe x1 slots?  The PCIe x1 slot just North of
> the top x16 slot should be free.  I'm guessing the other 2 are blocked
> by your GPU cooler, correct?

Ah, I'm sorry, no I didn't say I only the PCIe x16/x8 slot available, or 
at least that's not what I meant. I do need PCIe because both PCI slots 
are taken, but I do have all three PCIe x1 slots and one PCIe x8/x16 
slot available. The graphics card is only single thickness and could 
indeed be moved.

I know I could easily put two $30 2-port cards in, but for neatness I'd 
prefer one card with 4 ports, which is what I started this thread to 
look for. One 2-port card and a PMP is a reasonable solution that I 
might yet go for.

NB My PCI slots are occupied by a TV tuner card and a SCSI card which 
serves my tape library, and in any case I want to avoid the limitation 
of the PCI bus which would have half the bandwidth of one PCIe x1 v1 
slot even if it wasn't sharing with two other highish-bandwidth devices.

[...]
> I recommended the Marvell based card strictly because it does PCIe x1
> rev 2 for 500MB/s.  I only use the Silicon Image based cards, but I use
> more than one if I have more than 4 drives in an array.  The cost comes
> out the same at $40 as the Marvell card, but the SI route requires 2
> PCIe slots, and you only have one.

As noted I do have more PCIe slots, and I've just found a Lycom PE-115 
PCIe x1 2-port SATA-III card for £20, which some third-party sites say 
has a Marvell 88SE912x chip, and is PCIe v2.0, so that'd be my 
multi-card solution - two of them would give me the 4 ports I need to add.

[...]
> Well, you've given us conflicting requirements that are impossible to
> meet with any solution:
>
> 1.  Low cost
> 2.  Full b/w per drive
> 3.  Only one PCIe slot availiable
>
> There is not a solution available to meet all of your criteria.

My own research had got me that far, that's why I was asking here. If 
this is unreasonable, please excuse the noise...

>> Nevertheless, thank you very much for taking the time for such a
>> considered reply.
>
> You're welcome.  I think you're finding yourself in that "I want to have
> my cake, but eat it too" situation.  You can't get what you want at the
> price point you want.

Don't we all want to have our cake and eat it sometimes? ;-)

Thanks again for your thoughts.

Cheers,

John.

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