From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Joe Landman Subject: Re: HBA Adaptor Advice Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 07:55:03 -0400 Message-ID: <4DDA4B17.7060806@gmail.com> References: <4DDA41B2.8010003@wildgooses.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <4DDA41B2.8010003@wildgooses.com> Sender: linux-raid-owner@vger.kernel.org To: Ed W Cc: linux-raid@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-raid.ids On 05/23/2011 07:14 AM, Ed W wrote: > Getting back on track of specific adaptor advice: > > To recap: I am looking for ideas on what to buy to upgrade our small > office servers (not really stretched, just adding more backup disks and > similar). My main requirement is to be able to buy equipment in single > lots (one server at a time) and so I require the ability to take an > array from one machine and use it in another machine using a different > adaptor - therefore the previous thread has dissuaded me from looking at > adaptors with writeback cache (and also hardware raid controllers) > > Therefore can I see a show of hands for "good value" HBA adaptors with > 8, 12 and 24 ports? Ideally using fewer PCI slots is preferred and > onboard expanders rather than separate expanders are preferred Be aware that this won't be cheap. Also be aware that many (most) expandor designs are performance limited due to their implementations. We see significant contention from bandwidth oversubscription in every day situations, regardless where the expandor is. On the HBA side http://www.lsi.com/storage_home/products_home/host_bus_adapters/sas_hbas/internal/sas9201-16i/index.html On the hardware RAID side of this: http://www.lsi.com/storage_home/products_home/internal_raid/megaraid_sas/value_line/megaraid_sas_9260-16i/index.html LSI controllers as HBAs are reasonably good. Make sure you update your drivers and firmware to late revisions. > Seems that previously we discovered that most LSI RAID cards were well > supported and Marvel cards were frequently not. Does this > generalisation persist with pure HBA cards also? > > I can see the list of LSI HBA cards on their site, but any pointers for > good value HBA adaptors appreciated? (Current chassis will be a tower > chassic, but future upgrades are expected to be Supermicro/Norco 3/4U > rack boxes) > (is there a page on the wiki already covering any of this that we could > try and distil this wisdom to?) Don't skimp on power supply, or power distribution. RAIDs hate that. Don't skimp on cooling. Drives hate that. Regards, Joe -- Joseph Landman, Ph.D Founder and CEO Scalable Informatics, Inc. email: landman@scalableinformatics.com web : http://scalableinformatics.com http://scalableinformatics.com/sicluster phone: +1 734 786 8423 x121 fax : +1 866 888 3112 cell : +1 734 612 4615