Support for SAS/SATA non-RAID adapters

[Freddie Cash]

On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 9:51 AM, Brian Whalen <brian at brianwhalen.net> wrote:
> Freddie Cash wrote:
>> On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 11:43 PM, Rink Springer <rink at freebsd.org> wrote:
>>> On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 08:38:21PM -0800, Freddie Cash wrote:
>>>> I've also found a couple of Areca cards (PCI-X, non-RAID/PCIe RAID),
>>>> and have heard good things about Areca support in FreeBSD.  Any
>>>> comments on their quality/performance/reliability?
>>>
>>> I have got an Areca ARC-1110 4x SATA2 PCI-X card in my server, and I'm
>>> quite impressed with the performance; these cards do very well in terms
>>> I/O operations per second and the driver has been rock solid for me. The
>>> only downside is that they are quite expensive (but well worth it, IMO)
>>
>> Compared to a 3Ware 9550SXU controller, these are cheap.  The Areca is
>> only $500 (open-box) or $700 (new) on newegg.ca.  The 3Ware cards are
>> over $1000, with the PCIe versions being over $1200 (which is what
>> started me on this journey -- hardware budgets are getting smaller and
>> smaller each year).
>
> The 3ware cards are not that expensive unless you need a truckload of ports.
>
> For the 9650SE on newegg.com;
> 2 port is 185
> 4 port is 324
> 8 port is 525
> 12 port is 669
>
> Where are you getting the 1200 dollar price from?

We deal in Canadian dollars.  :)  Our hardware purchaser spent several
hours on the phone and web looking for a replacement 9650SE-12ML
(12-port, multi-lane, PCIe).  Every place she checked showed them as
$1000-1200.  We need the -12ML (or -16ML) for one server, as it's
actually using the RAID features, and the controller in that server
died (scorch marks on the heat sink).  As that server was using RAID6,
we couldn't replace it with any of the 9550s we have as spares.  :(

We have three servers using these cards.  Only 1 is actually using the
RAID features.  The other two are ZFS storage servers.  Going forward,
we will be putting in more ZFS systems than non-ZFS systems, so we
don't need as fancy of controller.  Just lots of ports (or lots of
cards, we have 3 PCI-X and 2 PCIe slots to work with).

-- 
Freddie Cash
fjwcash at gmail.com