RAID Controller Recommendations: ARC-1210 or 9650SE-4LPML

[Maxim Khitrov]

On 9/5/07, brad davison <demonichandextensions at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >Hello,
> >
> >My two main candidates are Areca ARC-1210, and 3ware 9650SE-4LPML.
> >Both are 4-lane SATA II controllers. Both cost about the same, and
> >from what I gather, both should be supported by FreeBSD. I read the
> >reviews, but would like to get some additional feedback specifically
> >for using the two under FreeBSD (maybe one has better drivers... I
> >don't know).
>
> I just put a 3ware Escalade into our mail server.  I don't have experience
> with the model you are speaking of, but I know that 3ware and BSD have a
> good long history together.  I had no problems with the controller (but I
> did have a strange issue with some Seagate drives, replacing them with
> Western Digitals fixed that though.)
>
> >RAID5? Which one has more mature drivers? If you have some other
> >recommendations, I'm happy to hear those as well.
>
> Like I mentioned, I had no problems with the 3ware, and it had good driver
> support in BSD.
>
> from the 3ware website:::  http://www.3ware.com/support/OS-Support.asp
> 9650SE Series
>
>     * FreeBSD 5.0 driver source available in 9.4.1 code set
>     * FreeBSD 6.0 driver source available in 9.4.1 code set
>     * FreeBSD 6.1 (x86 & x86_64)
>
> Take it easy,
> Brad

Good to know, thanks. Would still like to know a bit more about Areca,
since I have no experience with them and only heard about their
products recently.

As an alternative, I was considering the cheap(er) option. The
motherboard (GA-P35-DQ6) comes with 6 SATA II ports connected to
ICH9R. I have a feeling that using RAID 5 with this option would be
rather slow, that's why I'm looking into a dedicated hardware
controller. However, RAID 10 is a fairly simple implementation. I
can't use RAID 0 because I need redundancy, and RAID 1 is too slow.
RAID 10 obviously requires more drives, but for the $300 that I would
have spent on the controller, maybe instead it's worth to simply buy
an additional drive or two and use the built-in controller.

Any thoughts on this? I could probably get 4 320GB Seagate 7200.10
drives to begin with and have 640GB of space. Would add two more later
on when I need them. This actually turns out to be cheaper initially
than getting 3 of those drives along with a hardware controller. My
guess is that performance may also be better due to simplicity of
design. How does FreeBSD play with ICH9R RAID?

- Max