Safe card to replace for ICP Vortex GDT8514RZ ...

[Freddie Cash]

On Mon, July 31, 2006 11:05 pm, Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC wrote:
> On Jul 31, 2006, at 7:49 PM, User Freebsd wrote:

>> I have a remote server, running the above RAID controller, that, as
>>  most ppl here have seen over the past few weeks, is causing
>> endless headaches ...
>>
>> Official word from Adaptec is that FreeBSD is no longer a supported
>>  platform, so, I either live with the deadlocks, or try and figure
>> out a suitable replacement for the card ...
>>
>> So, can anyone recommend a card to replace this with?  Its a remote
>>  server, so I'm looking for something that will be plug-n-play,
>> same slot that the GDT is in ... I realize that I'll have to
>> reformat the server afterwards ...
>
> You may want to consider the LSI MegaRAID cards...  There are various
> ones.  Do you need the low profile format?  Look at the 320-1lp for
> that otehrwise the 320-1 or 320-2x
>
> They have freebsd drivers and a command line management app.

We've been bitten bad by these cards.  LSI MegaRAID 150-6 SATA RAID
controllers (PCI-X format).  The management tools are crap, the
throughput is crap, the onboard SATA chipset is a Silicon Image.  And
they will not run reliably when plugged into a riser card.  Testing
with FreeBSD 6.0 32-bit and 64-bit, and Debian Linux testing (32-bit
and 64-bit) has shown these cards to not be worth the time, hassle,
money, or effort.

We lost data on several servers before narrowing down the cause to
these cards.  We lost several weeks of time diagnosing these things. 
And we lost several hundred dollars when the vendor wouldn't take them
all back (we got them to trade most of them for 3Ware 9550SX cards).

In our experience, these cards are crap, and their tech support isn't
much better.


----
Freddie Cash
fcash at ocis.net