Help me pick the right RAID6 card..

S

SirGCal

Weaksauce
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May 18, 2008
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I'm torn between the LSI 9261-8i and the 3ware 9750-8i. I've used 3ware a lot myself and now LSI bought them.. These cards are very similar but, are there ANY differences? Speed/performance/commandline tools, etc.

I plan on using it in a flavor of Linux. I do not plan on using the BBU for this setup as write speeds will not be an issue and write caching is not important for me. Read speed is what it's all going to be about.

If anyone has other RAID card flavors; feel free to throw in the options. I do require RAID 6. Preferred 6g SATA in the end just for the overall benefits of the controller setup even with 3g drives. But I do want to make sure it has a fast array rebuild (if possible), hot-spare support. Online raid migration and expansion capabilities... SAS expandability if I ever get a nice backplane to go above 8 drives... etc. I do not need SSD capability since I'm going to huge storage (12TB usable space with 2TB drives x8 in RAID 6)... But it might be nice in a tie otherwise.

I went to the 9750 due to my familiarity with them and then found the LSI flavor (and it's $20 cheaper! Bonus...)... Anyone have more that I'm missing? I have no direct experience with LSI.

EDIT: Updated requirement information and current suspect lists;

  • Raid 6
  • 2 x SFF-8087 mini-SAS
  • SATA 6Gb/s
  • $500 limit

Right now it seems my options are limited to: (in no particular order)
  • HighPoint RocketRAID 4320 (not high on my list)
  • 3ware Internal 9750-8i (current most likely suspect)
  • LSI MegaRAID 9261-8i (or one of a number of other flavors depending where you want the SAS plugs. I think end-of-card is fine for me.)
 
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I'm leaning towards the LSI since they now own 3Ware. I hear the CLI still works on it and it rebuilds a touch faster... Still looking for opinions/facts.
 
Going to suggest Areca as usual. Out-of-band management rocks. You won't have it any other way after you get used to it.
 
Blue Fox said:
Going to suggest Areca as usual. Out-of-band management rocks. You won't have it any other way after you get used to it.
Click to expand...

I have no use for network management like that. I really see no benefit unless you have network ports burning a hole in your pocket or just can't get to a local terminal to do something. Since most of the time it would be a failure or increase causing the drives to have to be handled, I see no benefit to remote management what so ever. I have to go there to put the drives in anyhow...

Still, I've had Areca's fail too much in the past on me (infact, the last two servers I built at work were to replace Areca's failed raid cards...). Left a bad taste in my mouth. And unless they changed it lately, no good monitoring tools (just APIs to build your own). Honestly, they are the one that I do not care for. But to be fair, I haven't used them in a new system lately.

Plus, and most importantly, simply looking over their website; I do not see anything with SATA 6G support (or SAS for that matter). So they simply don't seem to have even an option for what I'm looking for...

Right now it seems my options are limited to: (in no particular order)
  • HighPoint RocketRAID 4320 (not high on my list either)
  • Adaptec 2266900-R (way too $)
  • 3ware Internal 9750-8i
  • LSI MegaRAID 9261-8i (or one of a number of other flavors depending where you want the SAS plugs)

Mostly, Raid 6, 2 x SFF-8087 mini-SAS (to keep cables down, but 8x SATA 6G would be acceptable also) and SATA 6Gb/s capability for the enhanced read speed benefits (don't care about write speed so no need for a BBU or write caching).
 
Even if you don't need to access it remotely, having it be OS independent is nice. LSI's software for example is god awful and problematic. As for Areca's offering, you must have missed the huge banner on the home page advertising this: http://areca.us/products/1880.htm

I can't comment too much on reliability as I've only owned 7 of their cards, but there is another guy on here that probably has 100 (I forget the actual number, so that could be way off) of them at work and he's been quite happy with them.
 
Blue Fox said:
Even if you don't need to access it remotely, having it be OS independent is nice. LSI's software for example is god awful and problematic. As for Areca's offering, you must have missed the huge banner on the home page advertising this: http://areca.us/products/1880i.htm

I can't comment too much on reliability as I've only owned 7 of their cards, but there is another guy on here that probably has 100 (I forget the actual number, so that could be way off) of them at work and he's been quite happy with them.
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I've never used LSI.. But 3ware is not OS dependent either. EDIT: After looking; it seems LSI is also OS independent... So I'm not sure what you are referring to (maybe just the new cards are now BIOS level? Perhaps a perk they got with the 3ware purchase or something?)...

We also have hundreds of servers at work... and have problems with them. Even in a clean room environment with full laminar flow.. As I said earlier, just replaced another set. Maybe we got some duds but... when you get bit enough, you end up afraid to pet the dog... And ya, we've had other brands fail also but never in batches... And that's just our department. You can claim you have 1e21 working great all day long but when I've had them literally let all the smoke out, in concert... they fall from my top picks.

404 error on that link also... /shrug... But lookin on Newegg; they have no offerings meeting my criteria. And assuming the part number is ARC-1880i, I don't see it on Amazon or through the suppliers at work... Maybe it's not out yet... The few places I did find it for sale (none of which I would trust) show it's price way up there with the Adaptec...

Anyhow, I don't want the Areca... Thanks but no.. I'm looking for information on other products and/or comparisons between the above listed (for example) or others I might have missed... I take it then your problem with LSI is their interface/setup system... Is that a recent complaint or an old one they may have fixed. The one above is the spitting image of the 3ware card; chips and all, so I'd find it hard to believe that much of the core would be different... but...
 
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I haven't had any issue with my Adaptec 5805. Also works great with my Chenbro SAS expander.
 
Accidentally messed up the link. This one works: http://areca.us/products/1880.htm
When I said OS dependent, management on all those cards is (except for the HighPoint) if you don't count the card's own BIOS that you access before you boot. My experiences with LSI cards go for recent ones. I had a 9280-8e. Software didn't even work half the time and literally froze for minutes at a time. Being all Java didn't help either.
 
Blue Fox said:
Accidentally messed up the link. This one works: http://areca.us/products/1880.htm
When I said OS dependent, management on all those cards is (except for the HighPoint) if you don't count the card's own BIOS that you access before you boot. My experiences with LSI cards go for recent ones. I had a 9280-8e. Software didn't even work half the time and literally froze for minutes at a time. Being all Java didn't help either.
Click to expand...

Actually, the typo might be my fault... I might have hit a key when copying... No biggie... But thanks...

I was right on the part number though.. And still don't see any...

HOWEVER, Java... Eww... (I'm a software engineer along with my little bits of help with the hardware group... I HATE Java... but that's another story...) So ya, that would push LSI down my list also... I lothe Java... (and I even write some stuff in Java.. Doesn't mean I have to like it...)

So you're referring to the maintenance/monitoring software? Like 3ware's CLI (which I LOVE!)... OK, well then the problem still remains; how do you get the system to monitor itself without burning up yet another network port... (or at least using a switch to split one)... Simply, that means that I either need to get a switch to expand the router, get a larger router (completely unnecessary, switch would be fine), and run another network drop to where the system will be kept (I have plenty of Cat-6 Plenum but... have to hire someoone to run the wire now that I'm in a wheelchair... no fun... and electricians are $$$.. Or leave the switch only at that system... wasting otherwise extra ports...).

Plus, once all that is complete, I have to manually go in and check the monitoring system? (I'm not stating facts here, trying to understand the excitement/intention of the ethernet plug...) Or have some other system go in and check it that way, either way relying still on the network to check the drive situation? Help me understand...

If the above is the case, it's still not even close to enticing for me. I'd much rather run a CLI via cron and have it email me and/or text me every hour... And/or not flip out should the network puke...

Help me understand where the benefit of this comes in... Or where I am (very likely) way far off here... Again, Areca isn't in my current lineup (especially with those prices I did find that 1880i card at) but... I'm always interested in learning...

And the only LSI cards I am interested in actually; are the ones bassed off the 3ware designs once they bought them. I think LSI knew they needed help and got a good product to help them out. I'm curious of the 9261-8i is a true copy of the 9750-8i or not. Would be interesting to get both and do live comparisons... But if LSI is still junk even with this change, then it looks like 3ware is the most attractive one to me at this current time...

The Adaptec option is just way too much $.. Plus I hear it runs really hot... I don't think I need that hot of a controller core for what I'm going to be doing with mostly just read I/O (and huge files.. not lots of little files...)
 
You don't have to use the ethernet port on the Areca/HighPoint cards for management. You just have the option. It really has no downsides apart from needing an extra port. You only benefit from it otherwise as it can do everything the regular management software can. I had mine set up to send me an SMS to my phone if there was a problem. The current 3ware cards are actually based off LSI's current ones, not the other way around, so I imagine that the management software could be very similar. I'm not sure about the Linux side of things however, so you would have to look into that. At least the Windows ones sucked. Never really used the CLI much though. Everything I run at home is either Windows or BSD.
 
I use several Areca cards with linux, and you do not need to use the card's ethernet port unless you want to. There is a CLI program, and also an http server program you can run under linux (localhost) to configure, control, and monitor the RAID(s). You can set it up to email you based on certain events, automatically scrub volumes periodically, or you could call the CLI from a cron job.
 
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