Inexpensive RAID1 controller for home server?

Inexpensive RAID1 controller for home server?

[Mark Knecht]

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.

   If this is a bad type of controller for a sinple RAID1 addition
please feel free to point me at an alternative. Amazon or NewEgg is
preferred.

Thanks,
Mark

Re: Inexpensive RAID1 controller for home server?

[Phil Turmel]

On 08/18/2012 03:18 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 have one of these in a non-critical home system (light duty media
server).  Rather old mobo, actually...  32bit w/ PCIe v1 slots.  Card
maxes out at 200MB/s in that system.  Theoretically capable of 500MB/s
in a PCIe v2 slot.

Kernel is vanilla 2.6.39.4 at the moment.  Card is bound to the ahci
driver with no problems.  Hotplug works fine, too.

>    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.
> 
>    If this is a bad type of controller for a sinple RAID1 addition
> please feel free to point me at an alternative. Amazon or NewEgg is
> preferred.

I got mine from NewEgg, FWIW.

HTH,

Phil

Re: Inexpensive RAID1 controller for home server?

[Stan Hoeppner]

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.

-- 
Stan

Re: Inexpensive RAID1 controller for home server?

[Roman Mamedov]

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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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Re: Inexpensive RAID1 controller for home server?

[Stan Hoeppner]

On 8/19/2012 4:34 AM, Roman Mamedov wrote:
> 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.

/me rolls eyes..

> 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.

Yeah, you're right.  All Silicon Image ASICs suck.  That must be the
reason they ship over 10x as many chips into the market as Marvell and
the others.  This must also be why BackBlaze chose SiI, twice, over
Marvell, Jmicron, etc, for their 1st and 2nd generation pods.

http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/07/20/petabytes-on-a-budget-v2-0revealing-more-secrets/

They use 3x Syba SiI3124 4 port PCIe x1 cards per system, 3 ports per
card, with 9x SiI3726 PMPs.  They run hundreds of these pods, thousands
of SiI SATA ASICs and 3x as many SiI PMPs.  No problems reported that
I've found.  If data corruption was a pervasive issue with SiI SATA
ASICs, based simply on numbers, BackBlaze would have run into this
problem.  As they haven't, I'd say that in the cases of data corruption
you mention, the root cause didn't lay in the SiI ASICs themselves, but
either in the cards (whose QC/QA can vary widely from vendor to vendor
and batch to batch), or in a compatibility issue in the individual
hosts, either hardware or software.  There is no design flaw in the SiI
chips that causes data corruption.  Please don't repeat such BS.

That said, I personally don't use cheap SATA controllers, and normally
don't recommend them, no matter the ASIC used.  But the OP obviously
isn't in the market for a $150-$200 LSI HBA, which is what I'd normally
recommend.

> 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

This is a non issue for the vast majority of users with rust, as most
drives can't stream more than 110-120 anyway.

> 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

Yes, I always base my purchasing decisions on the opinions found in a
single blog, and unsupported conclusions that the data loss of a few
people was caused by a claimed and unconfirmed flaw in an ASIC, an ASIC
which has shipped in the tens of millions of units.  If the problem were
the ASIC, there would be thousands of such reports, and the ASIC would
be respun to fix the problems, or a new BIOS, and the issue would be
documented by the manufacturer.

Roman has a beef with SiI.  It's unfounded and unsubstantiated, but he
has one nonetheless.  He also apparently has a beef with me for
constantly correcting him on these issues.

Believe who you wish.  I simply recommend you do your homework and
independently verify everyone's claims.  Or, you can simply buy any ~$20
HBA, and if it doesn't work, return it and get a different one.

-- 
Stan

Re: Inexpensive RAID1 controller for home server?

[Roman Mamedov]

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On Sun, 19 Aug 2012 16:48:41 -0500
Stan Hoeppner <stan@hardwarefreak.com> wrote:

> Yeah, you're right.  All Silicon Image ASICs suck.

"The only generic advice I can give you at this point) is to avoid
Silicon Image controllers, particularly their SATA controllers.  They
have a history of causing data corruption on Linux, FreeBSD, and
Windows, and some have reported other miscellaneous problems with them
as well."
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2008-October/185065.html

> Roman has a beef with SiI.  It's unfounded and unsubstantiated

"I've had problems with XFS and EXT4 over the md device driver that turned out
to be a bug in the Silicon Image 3132 chipset.  It quietly corrupts data."
-- https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=115128

"...Sil3132 2-port SATA-card which couldn't handle heavy load on both ports.
Single port was fine, so preclear did not reveal any problems. I have one
working and one non-working coming from the same supplier and looking almost
exactly the same so it would be impossible to know before hand which card
make/model might cause problems. In this case random read errors were produced
for the two attached disks."
-- http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=21052.0

"This might be the Sil3132 itself that's creating the problem. It's somewhat
notorious for corrupting data under high IO pressure. It's trivially easy to
trigger if you're using both ports at the same time, but I've seen similar
data corruption with just one port under active use."
-- http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=37779&start=1880

"There are confirmed problems within certain models of their SATA controllers
which cause silent data corruption and other issues, affecting Linux, FreeBSD,
and Windows. ... I'm not even willing to trust later revisions like the 3124;
not catching data corruption during QA/testing is simply unacceptable
regardless of what "class" of product it is.  I would be very surprised to
hear someone advocate use of Silicon Image controllers after reading the
above."
-- http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.os.freebsd.devel.hardware/6624

Etc, etc, etc. And here on this list:
http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/30629

> Believe who you wish.

Can fully agree with this. :)

-- 
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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Re: Inexpensive RAID1 controller for home server?

[Stan Hoeppner]

On 8/19/2012 5:06 PM, Roman Mamedov wrote:
> On Sun, 19 Aug 2012 16:48:41 -0500
> Stan Hoeppner <stan@hardwarefreak.com> wrote:
> 
>> Yeah, you're right.  All Silicon Image ASICs suck.
> 
> "The only generic advice I can give you at this point) is to avoid
> Silicon Image controllers, particularly their SATA controllers.  They
> have a history of causing data corruption on Linux, FreeBSD, and
> Windows, and some have reported other miscellaneous problems with them
> as well."

There is no confirmation of a bug in the 3132 because of all these
issues you quote are board specific.  Known product flaw/failure
statistics dictate there will be thousands of bad cards shipped when the
total chip volume is in the 10s of millions.

So please, stop spreading FUD about SiI chips.  It's fine to have an
opinion and share it.  Just don't back it up with unsubstantiated and
unconfirmed claims.

Simply say what you know to be fact:  Some people have had problems with
some cards containing the SiI 3132.  Don't make the claim that all 3132
chips have a defect when you can't back that statement up with facts.

Thank you.

-- 
Stan

Re: Inexpensive RAID1 controller for home server?

[Brad Campbell]

On 20/08/12 05:48, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
> Roman has a beef with SiI. It's unfounded and unsubstantiated, but he has one nonetheless. He also 
> apparently has a beef with me for constantly correcting him on these issues. Believe who you wish. 
> I simply recommend you do your homework and independently verify everyone's claims. Or, you can 
> simply buy any ~$20 HBA, and if it doesn't work, return it and get a different one. 

Coming from someone who lost gigabytes of data to silent and unreported corruption in precisely the 
fashion Roman is talking about (in fact it was his pointer that lead me to diagnose the card as 
bad), It'll be a cold day in hell before I recommend a SIL card to anybody.

Now, I bought my card from vendor in the Middle East, and it was an odd far-eastern brand with 
little or no backup, so it may well be an artefact of the cards layout or manufacture that caused it 
to occur. The fact it was reproducible in precisely the same manner as all the other reported issues 
points toward a common fault of some kind.

I stumped up a bit more cash and bought 4 "IBM" branded LSI SAS cards from fleabay and have not 
looked back.

To quote Stan directly :
"Believe who you wish. I simply recommend you do your homework and independently verify everyone's 
claims. Or, you can simply buy any ~$20 HBA, and if it doesn't work, return it and get a different one."

The big problem with that last sentence in the context of the SIL card is often you won't know about 
the issue until it has eaten most of your data, and done it so slowly and insidiously that your 3 
months of rotating backups are corrupted also.

But then I'm not espousing contents of other peoples blogs, only talking from first hand experience. 
As always, YMMV.

Brad