Asus P5BV/SAS Mobo

[epimetheus]

Anybody out there have any experience with this motherboard? I'm just getting into the WHS arena and looking to create a future-proof server (I know--impossible, but I can try). Right now I've got an Asus P5Q-E running WHS and I had quite a bit of trouble with the ICH10R drivers in RAID and AHCI modes. I had to set it back to IDE mode to get compatibility with WHS. I know speed isn't a big concern with WHS, but I'd like to take advantage of NCQ and the like. No sense running a drive slower than it's capable of. The P5BV has 12 built in SATA/SAS ports and 2 PCI-X slots for future Supermicro SAT2 cards. The flexibility to add a ZCR card if I ever wanted to do an advanced RAID setup is nice too.

Thoughts, criticism, etc?

 

[ScYcS]

The only thing that bothers me (as with all onboard stuff actually) is that if the mobo bites the dust, the raid is gone. And if you then have trouble finding the same mobo, you're pretty much effed.

If you go with a seperate raid controller, then even if the mobo dies, you can transfer the controller to a different machine with the drives and access your data...

 

[[LYL]Homer]

K.I.S.S?

 

[epimetheus]

Yeah, I like KISS too. Gene Simmons' reality TV show is pretty funny. Oh wait, wrong KISS...

Yeah, I know, "Keep It Simple, Stupid". But, you see, I'm an engineer, simple is boring. When I'm working on this stuff as a hobby, there tends to be some effort just to see if I can do something difficult, a proof of concept sort of.

Also, I will not being using RAID at this time, so although I agree, if you want better realiability, you should use seperate components, that really doesn't apply to my purpose right now.