Question regarding SAS controllers.

Question regarding SAS controllers.

[Justin Piszcz]

Do any SAS controllers exist that are not RAID?

Or to put it another way, if one wants to use SAS disks for example and 
NOT export them as JBOD or use them as RAID, is there a normal controller?

Back in the days of regular SCSI you had SCSI controllers and SCSI raid 
controllers, when searching for SAS controllers now, all that comes up is 
hundreds of SAS-Raid controllers.

Justin.

RE: Question regarding SAS controllers.

[Moore, Eric]

On Saturday, November 22, 2008 2:47 PM, Justin Piszcz wrote:

> Do any SAS controllers exist that are not RAID?
>
> Or to put it another way, if one wants to use SAS disks for
> example and
> NOT export them as JBOD or use them as RAID, is there a
> normal controller?
>
> Back in the days of regular SCSI you had SCSI controllers and
> SCSI raid
> controllers, when searching for SAS controllers now, all that
> comes up is
> hundreds of SAS-Raid controllers.
>

mptsas

http://www.lsi.com/storage_home/products_home/host_bus_adapters/sas_hbas/index.html

Eric Moore

RE: Question regarding SAS controllers.

[Justin Piszcz]

On Sat, 22 Nov 2008, Moore, Eric wrote:

> On Saturday, November 22, 2008 2:47 PM, Justin Piszcz wrote:
>
>> Do any SAS controllers exist that are not RAID?
>>
>> Or to put it another way, if one wants to use SAS disks for
>> example and
>> NOT export them as JBOD or use them as RAID, is there a
>> normal controller?
>>
>> Back in the days of regular SCSI you had SCSI controllers and
>> SCSI raid
>> controllers, when searching for SAS controllers now, all that
>> comes up is
>> hundreds of SAS-Raid controllers.
>>
>
> mptsas
>
> http://www.lsi.com/storage_home/products_home/host_bus_adapters/sas_hbas/index.html
>
> Eric Moore
>

Eric,

Thanks, I had checked this out earlier but the only non-raid SAS HBAs 
(those HBAs that do not end in -R) that are JBOD seem to be external only
(e.g., do not contain any internal SAS ports?)

Justin.

Re: Question regarding SAS controllers.

[Dr. David Alan Gilbert]

* Justin Piszcz (jpiszcz@lucidpixels.com) wrote:

<snip>

> Eric,
> 
> Thanks, I had checked this out earlier but the only non-raid SAS HBAs 
> (those HBAs that do not end in -R) that are JBOD seem to be external only
> (e.g., do not contain any internal SAS ports?)
> 
> Justin.

For some of the SAS cards that LSI produce there are 2 sets of firmware
on their site and you can load the non-RAID firmware; both versions
will let you drive stuff as individual drives (e.g. tape drives or
inidivudal discs) but the non-RAID firmware is a LOT faster for that.

Dave
-- 
 -----Open up your eyes, open up your mind, open up your code -------   
/ Dr. David Alan Gilbert    | Running GNU/Linux on Alpha,68K| Happy  \ 
\ gro.gilbert @ treblig.org | MIPS,x86,ARM,SPARC,PPC & HPPA | In Hex /
 \ _________________________|_____ http://www.treblig.org   |_______/

Re: Question regarding SAS controllers.

[Justin Piszcz]

On Sat, 22 Nov 2008, Dr. David Alan Gilbert wrote:

> * Justin Piszcz (jpiszcz@lucidpixels.com) wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>> Eric,
>>
>> Thanks, I had checked this out earlier but the only non-raid SAS HBAs
>> (those HBAs that do not end in -R) that are JBOD seem to be external only
>> (e.g., do not contain any internal SAS ports?)
>>
>> Justin.
>
> For some of the SAS cards that LSI produce there are 2 sets of firmware
> on their site and you can load the non-RAID firmware; both versions
> will let you drive stuff as individual drives (e.g. tape drives or
> inidivudal discs) but the non-RAID firmware is a LOT faster for that.

Four and eight port LSI cards:
http://www.lsi.com/storage_home/products_home/host_bus_adapters/sas_hbas/lsisas3041er/index.html
http://www.lsi.com/storage_home/products_home/host_bus_adapters/sas_hbas/lsisas3081er/index.html

Firmware and BIOS for both Integrated RAID and Initiator-Target.  Must 
boot to DOS to run utility.  Batch file simplifies installation.

Welcome to LSI Logic Integrated SAS Flash Utility
      This Utility will upgrade your LSI SAS3442E HBA

      Integrated RAID ( IR ) or Initiator ( IT ) Firmware

     For IR     Type   R or r
     For IT     Type   T or t
     To Exit    Type   q

So one just needs to flash the card and use the initiator firmware and 
then it will act like a regular (SAS) HBA, no RAID in the card itself, and 
then one, presumably could use the card for md/software raid and have 
direct access to the disks, no need for exporting disks via JBOD etc?

Justin.

RE: Question regarding SAS controllers.

[Moore, Eric]

> Firmware and BIOS for both Integrated RAID and Initiator-Target.  Must
> boot to DOS to run utility.  Batch file simplifies installation.
>
> Welcome to LSI Logic Integrated SAS Flash Utility
>       This Utility will upgrade your LSI SAS3442E HBA
>

Justin - We have linux tools for flashing firmware and bios.

RE: Question regarding SAS controllers.

[Justin Piszcz]

On Sat, 22 Nov 2008, Moore, Eric wrote:

>> Firmware and BIOS for both Integrated RAID and Initiator-Target.  Must
>> boot to DOS to run utility.  Batch file simplifies installation.
>>
>> Welcome to LSI Logic Integrated SAS Flash Utility
>>       This Utility will upgrade your LSI SAS3442E HBA
>>
>
> Justin - We have linux tools for flashing firmware and bios.
>

Eric, one final question:
http://www.lsi.jp/storage_home/products_home/host_bus_adapters/sas_hbas/lsisas3041er/index.html
This obviously has 4 SAS/SATA ports (regular cables) and looks like it 
would be great in Linux/SW raid for SAS/SATA disks.

This (8 port version):
http://www.lsi.com/storage_home/products_home/host_bus_adapters/sas_hbas/lsisas3081er/index.html
Has two SFF-8087 mini-SAS connectors.

It states "two (4) x1 SATA cables"

Does this mean:

8087 ------------> 8087 (with 4 lanes)

Thus it would require the purchase of an additional breakout cable or 
attachment to a special SATA/SAS enclosure.

or:

8087 ------------> regular sas/sata/1
                    regular sas/sata/2
                    regular sas/sata/3
                    regular sas/sata/4

Justin.

RE: Question regarding SAS controllers.

[Justin Piszcz]

On Sat, 22 Nov 2008, Justin Piszcz wrote:

>
>
> On Sat, 22 Nov 2008, Moore, Eric wrote:
>
>>> Firmware and BIOS for both Integrated RAID and Initiator-Target.  Must
>>> boot to DOS to run utility.  Batch file simplifies installation.
>>> 
>>> Welcome to LSI Logic Integrated SAS Flash Utility
>>>       This Utility will upgrade your LSI SAS3442E HBA
>>> 
>> 
>> Justin - We have linux tools for flashing firmware and bios.
>> 
>
> Eric, one final question:
> http://www.lsi.jp/storage_home/products_home/host_bus_adapters/sas_hbas/lsisas3041er/index.html
> This obviously has 4 SAS/SATA ports (regular cables) and looks like it would 
> be great in Linux/SW raid for SAS/SATA disks.
>
> This (8 port version):
> http://www.lsi.com/storage_home/products_home/host_bus_adapters/sas_hbas/lsisas3081er/index.html
> Has two SFF-8087 mini-SAS connectors.
>
> It states "two (4) x1 SATA cables"
>
> Does this mean:
>
> 8087 ------------> 8087 (with 4 lanes)
>
> Thus it would require the purchase of an additional breakout cable or 
> attachment to a special SATA/SAS enclosure.
>
> or:
>
> 8087 ------------> regular sas/sata/1
>                   regular sas/sata/2
>                   regular sas/sata/3
>                   regular sas/sata/4
>
> Justin.
>

Newegg has the answer:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118092
http://c1.neweggimages.com/NeweggImage/productimage/16-118-092-07.jpg

Follow-up:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118058
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118092

How come the reviews are so bad for these cards?  (They mostly used the HW 
raid function, which I am not interested in).

Eric,

If one runs:

dd if=/dev/disk1 of=/dev/null bs=1M &

For eight disk drives on the 8-port SAS controller in an x8 or x16 slot, 
will they be able to achieve the maximum bandwidth of each drive, for 
example, velociraptor = 800MiB/s so it should 800MiB/s in aggregate reads 
(using direct-bare mode), NOT on-board raid?

Justin.

Re: Question regarding SAS controllers.

[Dr. David Alan Gilbert]

* Justin Piszcz (jpiszcz@lucidpixels.com) wrote:

<snip>

> How come the reviews are so bad for these cards?  (They mostly used the HW 
> raid function, which I am not interested in).

My experience generally is they are very stable but just not very
fast with the hardware RAID (actually I can't think of
any of the hardware raid cards that are that fast - especially for
write).

Dave
-- 
 -----Open up your eyes, open up your mind, open up your code -------   
/ Dr. David Alan Gilbert    | Running GNU/Linux on Alpha,68K| Happy  \ 
\ gro.gilbert @ treblig.org | MIPS,x86,ARM,SPARC,PPC & HPPA | In Hex /
 \ _________________________|_____ http://www.treblig.org   |_______/

Re: Question regarding SAS controllers.

[Grant Grundler]

On Sat, Nov 22, 2008 at 1:46 PM, Justin Piszcz <jpiszcz@lucidpixels.com> wrote:
> Do any SAS controllers exist that are not RAID?
>
> Or to put it another way, if one wants to use SAS disks for example and NOT
> export them as JBOD or use them as RAID, is there a normal controller?

Besides mptsas, there is mvsas (Marvell 6480 chip , IIRC).

> Back in the days of regular SCSI you had SCSI controllers and SCSI raid
> controllers, when searching for SAS controllers now, all that comes up is
> hundreds of SAS-Raid controllers.

Because lots of the windows server users demand HW RAID?
And it's a "value add"; vendors can charge more money for the RAID cards.

grant

Re: Question regarding SAS controllers.

[Wes Felter]

While we're on the topic, are these new Adaptec HBAs any good?

http://www.adaptec.com/en-us/_common/series1

Wes Felter - wesley@felter.org