is this better than the hp expander?

  • Thread starter Deleted member 82943
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The card you linked is a RAID controller, not an expander, two different beasts.

That said this looks like a very nice card and not too bad a price, it all depends on what you intend to do with it. What DO you intend to do with it?
 
That is a crazy good price. At newegg the card is $1320. I may pull the trigger on this because I wouldn't' even need an hp expander if I got this card. I wonder what the catch is though.
 
Again, it would depend on what the intended use is. If you intend to use hardware RAID this card should be great, track down a battery module and go!
If you intend to implement raid in software you might want to verify that this card either has an IT mode, or will pass drives not configured into arrays on to the OS. I have had the terrible luck that every RAID card i manage to lay my hands on for a reasonable price (read: 'free') has not allowed this functionality.
 
yeah more research is required but i plan to do the passthrough thing and just want to leverage the switching capability of the card as i suspect it has more performance than the xpander does
 
Aren't most high port raid controllers like this an 8 port raid controller + builtin expander?
 
That does appear to be the case, but i'm having trouble finding any information on what chipset is on-board. But i keep getting distracted by work, so i might be looking right at the answer and not seeing it.
 
drescherjm said:
Aren't most high port raid controllers like this an 8 port raid controller + builtin expander?
Click to expand...

Most likely one of those heatsinks is covering an expander IC. I think only the new Adaptec 7 series cards use controllers with more than 8 native ports.
 
well i'm pulling the trigger

see if it works, if not i'll have some hardware to sell
 
Dalfo002 said:
That does appear to be the case, but i'm having trouble finding any information on what chipset is on-board. But i keep getting distracted by work, so i might be looking right at the answer and not seeing it.
Click to expand...

The raid on chip chipset is Intel iop348. I do not know the expander chipset

The card utilizes only pic-e v1 8x
 
the hp expander is pci-e 4x right, so this should be a boost
 
Does the HP expander actually have an HBA on board? i was under the impression the PCI-e connector was only for powering the card, i never really looked that closely at it since i didn't have the money to throw down and get one at the time.
 
Dalfo002 said:
Does the HP expander actually have an HBA on board? i was under the impression the PCI-e connector was only for powering the card, i never really looked that closely at it since i didn't have the money to throw down and get one at the time.
Click to expand...

Correct. The PCIe connector is only for power.
 
Dalfo002 said:
Does the HP expander actually have an HBA on board? i was under the impression the PCI-e connector was only for powering the card, i never really looked that closely at it since i didn't have the money to throw down and get one at the time.
Click to expand...

This is correct. The HP SAS Expander still requires a separate HBA.
 
what will be interesting to see is if this will allow me to pass the drives to the lsi 2008 based controller i have in the esx box

i'm banking on better and more switching capacity on this card than the expander who knows tho
 
thank you both, in which case in response to gigatexel's comment, the difference in size of the PCI-e connections on these two cards would have nothing to do with the performance difference. Performance will be based on the difference (if any) in expander chipset and the performance of your chosen HBA.

edit: gigatexel's earlier comment

@gigatexel, what are you using to power the HP expander in your disk array box, if i may ask?
 
Nice, i would be interested to know if the adaptec card will allow switching without bootstrapping the card first, let us know how that goes!

I believe the dual-core processor is referring to the RAID processor ('engine') on the adaptec card, not the on-board expander chipset.
 
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An expander doesn't need any kind of serious CPU power, it's not a RAID card.
 
lol sounds like it's a bit overkill maybe -- when it arrives i'll let you know what happens, if it will work with zfs and fbsd and passing through the drives

i'm still lost as to what my performance issue is at - beefy system with lots of ram and cpu speed and still only 65-75MB/s writes makes no sense to me
 
@mejohnm, it certainly appears to be the right link, the card in the original link was the 52445
 
This card can not do jbod. You have to create raid0 for each drive if want to use the card without raid capability.

As I remember. The card is picky on data HD. Sas is good.
Predecessor Adaptec series 3 is friendly on data HDD. And support 3t hd
 
well shit since it's on it's way here...

if i raid0 each drive it'll work for pass through?

we'll see if it likes my drives
 
ClassH said:
That is a crazy good price. At newegg the card is $1320. I may pull the trigger on this because I wouldn't' even need an hp expander if I got this card. I wonder what the catch is though.
Click to expand...

The catch is that its an Adaptec 5 series
 
gigatexal said:
well shit since it's on it's way here...

if i raid0 each drive it'll work for pass through?

we'll see if it likes my drives
Click to expand...

you have to make each drive as RAID0 :p.
unconfigured HD can not be seen from outside this Raid card, but you can see on the Raid card option ROM (you have to press CTRL+A).

this is absolutely Not pass-through hehehe.
this card is old and old, pci-express 1 :p... current card utilizes express 2 (3 on newer card).

once you configure each HD as RAID0. for example, you have 5 HDD and need RAID for each HD, the total will be 5 RAID) :p where will treated in the OS as 5 HD

SMART query from OS level would not work perfectly, I think you have to pass an extra param ( do not remember on my head )

the card support 3T HD or greater..:D



I
 
That card also runs extremely hot 50C-60C @ idle. And without proper cooling "and by proper cooling I mean Delta type screamers" during heavy Disk I/O will start taking errors and shutdown or literally fry itself. I purchased that same exact model in a attempt to forgo an expander and found out the hard way. No direct disk passthrough, very picky about SATA disk compatibility and mediocre performance considering what it retails for.
 
shit well ive already contacted them to see if its been shipped already if not i'll have to haggle for a refund

thanks for the heads up guys
 
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