PCI-X SATA Card + Server Recommendation

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 08:55:02PM +1000, Danny Carroll wrote:
> Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
> > http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA/series_2000.htm
> > HighPoint RocketRAID 2210  (hptrr(4) driver; be sure to read NOTES)
> > HighPoint RocketRAID 2220  (hptrr(4) driver; be sure to read NOTES)
> > HighPoint RocketRAID 2224  (hptrr(4) driver; be sure to read NOTES)
> > HighPoint RocketRAID 2240  (hptrr(4) driver; be sure to read NOTES)
> 
> Can you (or someone else) please tell me a little more about this?   Do
> the drives (in JBOD mode) present themselves as part of the ATA bus or
> SCSI bus?

The hptrr(4) driver relies on SCSI CAM/da(4), and does not use the
ata(4) driver in any way.

> Do you know if NCQ and SATA-II support is in there?

Re: SATAII: if the product data sheet or the user manual states the card
supports SATA300, then yes.

Re: NCQ: the user manual probably answers this question, or a FAQ/KB
article.  I hope you're not planning on disabling write caching on your
disks (as people often ask if controllers or drives supports command
queueing so they can do this.  NCQ does not provide the amount of
performance increase like SCSI command queuing does.  On the other
hand, TCQ (often found on SAS drives) does.)

> Can you do Smart queries to the drives?

I have no idea.  I suppose it would have to support pass(4), or provide
the functionality itself (Areca controllers do the latter). 

> > http://www.areca.com.tw/products/pcix.htm
> > Areca ARC-1110    (arcmsr(4) driver)
> > Areca ARC-1120    (arcmsr(4) driver)
> > Areca ARC-1130    (arcmsr(4) driver)
> > Areca ARC-1160    (arcmsr(4) driver)
> > Areca ARC-1130ML  (arcmsr(4) driver)
> > Areca ARC-1160ML  (arcmsr(4) driver)
> > 
> > The FreeBSD community members who have Areca cards have been thrilled
> > with them, and *do* use the native RAID features reliably.
> 
> Personally I am torn right now between an Adapted 31205, a 3ware
> 9650SE-12ML and an Areca 1230.  I'm going for ZFS so I really want a
> fast SATA card with lots of ports (8-12) and no raid functionality.

I recommend avoiding Adaptec.  I will repeat that: avoid Adaptec.

You are not going to find a SATA card that has non-RAID capability with
that amount of ports.  Besides, it shouldn't matter to you if the card
has RAID capability, because nothing forces you to use it.  All that
should matter to you is the following:

* Is the card version/model supported under FreeBSD?
* Does the card supports disks in a JBOD fashion (not part of an array)?
* Can I get SMART stats from the drive (or via CLI; see below)?
* Is there a native FreeBSD CLI binary for controlling features of the
  controller if I need it?

> There is not much out there and it's all expensive.

But neither of these are FreeBSD problems.  The same would apply if you
were using any operating system.

> > There's a bunch of Supermicro systems which meet your needs.  The first
> > four are very new, and use the Intel X48 chipset.  I don't know of any
> > FreeBSD people using the X7SBU board, but I'm sure there are some.
> > 
> > http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/1U/
> > Supermicro SuperServer 5015B-URB   (~US$975)
> > Supermicro SuperServer 5015B-NTRB  (~US$975)
> > Supermicro SuperServer 5015B-UB    (~US$785)
> > Supermicro SuperServer 5015B-NTB   (~US$785)
> > Supermicro SuperServer 5015B-MTB   (~US$655)
> > 
> > bsdhwmon(8) supports the 5015B-MTB (X7SBi), but doesn't support the
> > others (X7SBU).  If someone out there has an X7SBU, please get in
> > touch with me so I can add support for it!
> 
> I have an X7SBE, so I'm, keen to try out bsdhwmon.   Installing right now...
> 
> Out of curiosity (and way OT)I get a lot of ACPI messages on my
> supermicro board:
> 
> Oct 22 11:50:29 nas kernel: ACPI Error (psargs-0459): [\_SB_.PCI0.PSMS]
> Namespace lookup failure, AE_NOT_FOUND
> Oct 22 11:50:29 nas kernel: ACPI Error (psparse-0626): Method
> parse/execution failed [\_SB_.PCI0.LPC0.SIO_.MSE0._STA] (Node
> 0xffffff00013a6260), AE_NOT_FOUND
> 
> If you use supermicro boards a lot then perhaps you have seen these?

I have not seen these on any of our systems.  Chances are they're ACPI
or AML errors which can be fixed by the vendor with a BIOS upgrade.
I would recommend asking about this on freebsd-acpi instead.

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |