Up: Another BIOS RAID or host based RAID question

[Tulio Guimarães da Silva]

  Well, a bit late, but I hope it´s still in time...
  Here at work, we´re successfully using a Highpoint 1820A S-ATA RAID 
controller on a HP ML110 server, this card is (at least apparently) 
fully supported by FreeBSD by Highpoint itself, and works fine. There 
even seems to be some drivers enhancements in version 5.4-RELEASE.
  One thing to note is that this 1820A supports up to 8 disks in RAID 
modes 0,1,5, and JBOD, and (important) it´s 100MHz PCI-X, but there are 
simpler, standard-PCI versions for up to 4 disks. As for performance, we 
haven´t done yet any serious testing, but rough calculations from common 
file transfers indicate something between 60MB/s and 80 MB/s on RAID 5.
  As for Promise controllers, we´re not being much happy with the S150 
SX4, and we´ve got some trouble with integrated Promise chips, but these 
were last tested on FreeBSD 5.2.1. I don´t remember the exact chip 
models, but they were from Asus P4P800 and P4C800. I didn´t test´em 
after that, but there seems to have been various enhancements for pst 
driver on FreeBSD 5.3.
  It´s not quite the platform you desire (Intel P4), but I hope this can 
add something. ;) Cheers,

Tulio

> Both 3ware boards are on similar based hardware: Tyan S5120AGNF (tomcat
> i915g), PIV 3 ghz-HT disabled, 2GB of RAM. Mylex board is installed on an
> old PIII 800mhz, 768MB of RAM.
>
> I've run bonnie on the 3 servers, theese are the results:
>
>  *3Ware 7506 4LP (ATA-RAID 5):
>               -Per Char- --Block--- -Rewrite-- -Per Char- --Block--- 
> --Seeks---
> Machine    MB K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU  
> /sec %CPU
>           100 26773 21.0 25696  7.0 24083  4.4 106501 98.1 872573 98.5
> 86894.2 93.9
>
>
> *3Ware 9500s (SATA-RAID 5):
> Machine    MB K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU  
> /sec %CPU
>           100 35912 27.1 37985  7.2 42063  6.6 115488 98.1 2237713
> 99.2 134675.6 98.5
>
>
> *Mylex AcceleRAID 160 (SCSI-RAID 5):
>               -Per Char- --Block--- -Rewrite-- -Per Char- --Block--- 
> --Seeks---
> Machine    MB K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU  
> /sec %CPU
>           100  9528 27.3  9839  7.8 11813 12.9 36905 98.9 169363 99.1
> 25536.9 98.3
>
>
> None of theese servers are very busy, and the tests where performed under
> normal load.
> 3Ware 9500s performs very well, but be carefull, acpi enabled hangs the
> server every day, and disabling it will hang it every 10 :(
>
> If you're interested about ATA/SATA RAID you should try to get some
> information on promise boards too. Hope someone in the list can help.
>
>
> 2005/5/3, Toll, Eric <etoll at vipstructures.com>:
> >
> >
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: owner-freebsd-hardware at freebsd.org
> > > [mailto:owner-freebsd-hardware at freebsd.org] On Behalf Of
> > > Franco Bruno Borghesi
> > > Sent: Tuesday, May 03, 2005 10:05 AM
> > > To: Toll, Eric
> > > Cc: freebsd-hardware at freebsd.org
> > > Subject: Re: Another BIOS RAID or host based RAID question
> > >
> > > Yes, I am using 3 servers with hardware raid:
> > >
> > > a)3ware 7500 with 4 ATA disks (1 spare) WD 160 GB in RAID 5,
> > > works great.
> > > b)Mylex AcceleRAID 160 with 3 SCSI 8 GB Quantum disks, RAID
> > > 5, works great.
> > > c)3ware 9600s with 4 SATA 150 disks (1 spare) WD 160 GB in
> > > RAID 5. Many problems, occasional reboots, couldn't get any
> > > help from the lists.
> > >
> > > The 3ware 7500 board comes in severall flavours, you could
> > > try a two channel model, though the only utility you have is
> > > tw_cli, it's console based, no alarms. It's also an ATA controller :(
> > >
> > > Hope this helps.
> >
> > Yes it does, I just did a quick search of 3ware storage adapters on
> > Insight and
> > the 8xxx and 9xxx series are available.
> > They are all 64 Bit PCI, which leads me to the mainboard. I wanted 
> to get
> > an
> > Asus or Abit MB with an (single) AMD processor (64 perhaps) with 1Gb of
> > RAM.
> >
> > What mainboard are your 3ware cards plugged into?
> >
> > I want to build a new BSD server, with ATA raid or SATA raid, AMD 64 
> chip
> > (not
> > using 64bit BSD), MB and nice P/S and case. Can anyone recommend a good
> > shopping
> > list?
> >
> > Regards,
> > Eric
> >