Safe card to replace for ICP Vortex GDT8514RZ ...

[Martin Nilsson]

Freddie Cash wrote:
> 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.

The design is three years old and is showing its age. Their performance 
is not on par with modern cards like 3ware 9550, the price is however 
considerably lower. The newer MegaRAID 300-8x (and coming -4e, -8e) are 
modern designs with faster processors and acceptable performance.

> And they will not run reliably when plugged into a riser card.

Wasn't that problem caused by a Tyan motherboard with a substandard 
riser? I have used lots of 150-4/6 with Supermicro boards and risers 
without any problems.

> 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).

Buy things from vendors who know what they sell :-) It will be more 
expensive but in the long run you will save both money and especially time.

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

LSI's tech support is top notch and very helpful. Tyan is the real 
stinker in the business. Uneducated, without any lab resources and hard 
to get hold of. (excluding the Taiwanese server wanna-be manufacturers 
who's support is virtually non-existent)

/Martin