ARC-1882i or 9271-8i?

Hi guys, i can't decide which raid card to get and i would love some input from you guys. The card will be featured in my ESXi server and mainly handle my archive.

Either the Areca ARC-1882i or the LSI 9271-8i?

ARC-1882i pros/cons
+dedicated lan port for management
+cheaper than the LSI card

-slightly slower performance than the LSI card


LSI 9271-8i pros/cons
+cachevault backup unit
+faster than the areca card
-More expensive than the areca card

Did i miss anything?

Or should i go the sas3/12gbs route? If so, how many regular 7200rpm drives do i have to connect to the card to be able to see the speed difference between sas2 and sas3?

I've had both Areca and LSI RAID controllers. I prefer the management interface of the LSI - I've found it to be faster and more intuitive. I'm currently only buying LSI cards and in fact the 9271-8i is my go to controller these days.

Are you certain the LSI card is more? I just bought one from ProVantage.com for $526.

GMcDonnell said:

I've had both Areca and LSI RAID controllers. I prefer the management interface of the LSI - I've found it to be faster and more intuitive. I'm currently only buying LSI cards and in fact the 9271-8i is my go to controller these days.

Are you certain the LSI card is more? I just bought one from ProVantage.com for $526.

Click to expand...

Are you talking about the LSI "Storage Manager" windows software?
Do you use any cache backup unit?

Well where i live it's more expensive but it isn't by that much.

Actually I'm referring to LSI's BIOS level configuration software. I find it to be quicker and more intuitive than the Areca web interface that one can access via the dedicated Ethernet connection.

One advantage the 1882 has (at least if the two units docs can be believed): the 1882 allows you to pass disks through to the host as individual disks, but still apply the writeback cache to them. lsi doesn't. i suppose with lsi you can create N 1-disk arrays and get around it that way, but ugh... dunno how many folks would care about that but...

hmm yeah, that's something to think about. How about going sas3? the price difference isn't that great.

spacecakes said:

hmm yeah, that's something to think about. How about going sas3? the price difference isn't that great.

Click to expand...

It's true that there's not much cost difference in the cards, but one thing to remember is that if you have an SAS3 controller and an SAS2 backplane or expander is that you will need SAS3 to SAS2 cables. These are available but not cheap.

GMcDonnell said:

It's true that there's not much cost difference in the cards, but one thing to remember is that if you have an SAS3 controller and an SAS2 backplane or expander is that you will need SAS3 to SAS2 cables. These are available but not cheap.

Click to expand...

I didn't know that, but there are regular sas3->sata breakout cables i suppose?