SCSI RAID Controller That Supports > 2TB?

[lastmile77]

Is there a SCSI hardware RAID controller out there that supports volumes over 2TB? I've seen sources that claim this is a limitation of the SCSI spec yet others the claim working setups but don't give much detail. I'm not talking about an OS partition limit but a recent SCSI controller that supports >48-bit LBA. PCI/PCI-X, U160/U320 not SAS.

 

[houkouonchi]

The LSI22320 controller should do it.

See:

http://www.lsi.com/DistributionSyst...d_and_LSILogic_support_large_RAID_volumes.pdf

When combined with supporting 64-bit Operating Systems such as Linux 2.6 kernel and HBAs such as LSI Logic's 7202XP or the LSI22320 Ultra 320 SCSI HBA, EonStor subsystems support Logical Drives up to 64TB in optimization for sequential mode or 16TB in optimization for random mode.

 

[lastmile77]

The few bits of info I've seen that suggested it was possible have been about that U320 LSI HBA. But I don't think that's a RAID controller (they do have one that just does RAID 0/1) so the card must be hooked to an external Infotrend controller in the example given in that document. I found a post somewhere from someone running Linux who had a problem building larger volumes (using an LSI card) until he changed some setting to make the connection U320 rather than the default speed (think it was Ultra2).

I'd still like to know if there is a hardware controller that can handle >2TB volumes but I'm leaning towards software RAID. But now I'm confused about whether I need a particular SCSI card just to build an array that large in software.

I've got a SATA->SCSI enclosure and want to buy some 1 TB drives. I can put them in the enclosure or get a new desktop case and mount them internally. If I go the enclosure route I have options on which system I want to run it off of. If I go the internal route I use native SATA connections and don't have to worry about anything SCSI.

 

[lastmile77]

OK, here's Qlogic's Knowledge Base entry KB12182:

Question:

Can QLogic adapters address a LUN size greater than 2TB?

Answer:

QLogic drivers are a SCSI pass-through (SCSI miniport) driver; they do not interpret the SCSI data passing to and from the server and storage. By design, they do not have a size limit for a LUN or disk.

Operating System:

LINUX_RED_HAT,LINUX_SUSE,NETWARE,SOLARIS,WINDOWS_2000,WINDOWS_NT,WINDOWS_SERVER_2003,WINDOWS_XP

Comments:

NONE

I have a dual channel 12160 U160 card. They also make a RAID version of that card. Strange that Dell Perc controllers seem to be based on the same chip but supposedly have a 2TB limit according to a Dell manual. Additional Qlogic KB posts confirm that their cards have no LUN size limit.