Best sata raid card (6-8 port)

[400+whpwrx]

need to be able to do raid 5, 10 50, etc...

want best features and speed of course..

this is going to be for a large array 1-2tb need it to be stable and able to handle a beating.

Lots of large files with lots of read ops...

am looking at the following card..

http://www.broadcom.com/products/Enterprise-Small-Office/Storage-Solutions/BC4852

[defakto]

I'm always partial to 3com just because they've been around a while, not always the fastest but rock solid performers in the long run.

[mikeblas]

Which operating system?

LSI Logic MegaRAID (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816118011) cards are great, and Windows 2003 Server-certified.

[Ice Czar]

Areca ARC-1120
http://www.topmicrousa.com/arc-1120.html

if course its PCI-X 64bit
but so was that broadcom
what server board you using?
Adapter Architecture • Intel 80331 I/O Processor (500MHz) • 64-bit/133MHz PCI-X bus compatible • 128MB on-board DDR333 SDRAM with ECC protection • One SODIMM socket to support DDR333 SDRAM with ECC protection, Upgrade to 2GB for ARC-1160 model • Write-through or write-back cache support • Support up to 4/8/16 SATA-II drives • Multi-adapter support for large storage requirements • BIOS boot support for greater fault tolerance • BIOS PnP (plug and play) and BBS (BIOS boot specification) Support • Tekram's new Areca polynomial ASIC to support extreme performance RAID 6 engine(except for ARC-1110) • NVRAM for RAID configuration & transaction log • Redundant flash image for adapter availability • Battery Backup Module (BBM) ready (Option)



http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=893511
http://www.tweakers.net/reviews/557

[ohknats]

Areca ARC-1120
http://www.topmicrousa.com/arc-1120.html

if course its PCI-X 64bit
but so was that broadcom
what server board you using?



http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=893511
http://www.tweakers.net/reviews/557


I own the RC-1120 and it smokes!! Under server 2003 it has been 100% stable and its pretty fast. I only have 5 250 gig Seagates on it right now. I'm waiting until I have at least 5 of them before I do some benchmarking.

For what its worth; my 3 drive RAID 5 in HDTach is busting to 225MB/s and sustaining 130MB/s.

[ambit]

I'm always partial to 3com just because they've been around a while, not always the fastest but rock solid performers in the long run.
3Ware?
If so, i agree.

[400+whpwrx]

it is going to be going into a sun w2100z work station...

For now, then into its own wonderful little full size case..

[xonik]

Areca ARC-1120
http://www.topmicrousa.com/arc-1120.html

if course its PCI-X 64bit
but so was that broadcom
what server board you using?



http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=893511
http://www.tweakers.net/reviews/557I'll be damned...hardware-assisted RAID 6. :cool:

[defakto]

Yeah, I meant 3ware, stupid third shift job makes me a touch out of it sometimes.

[400+whpwrx]

im still liking the feature set of the broadcom board..

the ability to use disks with larger size and partition off arrays on the same physhical disk..

nice to have.. plus the cost isnt to bad compared the the raid 6 card that was posted. (looks purtty tho)..

anyone have one of those broadcom cards?

[400+whpwrx]

bump

[mikeblas]

the ability to [..] partition off arrays on the same physhical disk..


That sounds slow. Doesn't it defeat the purpose of RAID?

[DougLite]

Acutally, that is a really cool feature, with some nice possibilites.

For example, you can take two physical disks, and have a RAID-1 across most of the space for a fault tolerant boot volume, then a RAID-0 with the last gig or so for a fast page/swap volume.

You can take four disks, use a fraction of two of the drives for a fault tolerant RAID-1 boot volume, the same fraction of two more in a small RAID-0 volume, and have the rest of the space in RAID-5.

You can also use those features, in theory, to short-stroke drives, allowing you to increase performance by reducing the length of seeks under random workloads, in exchange for a sacrifice of capacity.

[mikeblas]

For example, you can take two physical disks, and have a RAID-1 across most of the space for a fault tolerant boot volume, then a RAID-0 with the last gig or so for a fast page/swap volume.


Which leaves your OS is fighting over the same head, between hitting system files on the boot partition and paging/swapping to the other partition on the same volume. Doesn't that sounds slow?


You can take four disks, use a fraction of two of the drives for a fault tolerant RAID-1 boot volume, the same fraction of two more in a small RAID-0 volume, and have the rest of the space in RAID-5.


Why would you mix levels like this? Besides putting more requests on the same spindles, thrashing seeks as you service all the requests for the different logical volumes, you're complicating your disaster recovery.

What application would that scenario have?

[DougLite]

Ideally, you would have all of the spindles you could dream up uses for. However, that has a high cost in both dollars and rack space. It's quite a bit easier to integrate two hard drives with two split RAID levels than two arrays for a total of four drives into a chassis, especially a 1U or 2U rackmount unit.

Of course having multiple RAID arrays on the same physical disks doesn't make sense from a performance standpoint. However, any IT manager who has had to deal with cuts in budget or limited rack space can tell you that performance, cost, and ease of integration compete roughly equally.

I can agree that the case of the mixed RAID-5 and RAID-1 volumes does complicate disaster recovery, as you would be rebuilding two arrays at once. However, you don't care about disaster recovery if you're working a RAID-0 volume - you just use it as fast scratch space, whether in general for a page file or a scratch area for a specific application. Also, Enterprise level SCSI drives are designed for random workloads and thrashing across all areas of the disk. Once again, in an environment where performance is the only goal, you would not do such things. Compromises must be made in certain situations though, and it is nice to have the flexibility.