[olug] Linux friendly SATA RAID controller

[Shawn Mattingly]

Adaptec's drivers have gotten a lot better...to the point of being
accepted by the kernel hackers for inclusion into the mainline kernel. I
have been eyeing the Adaptec RAID 3405 for purchase:

http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/products/sas_cards/value/SAS-3405/

Shawn

Phil Brutsche wrote:
> Dan Linder wrote:
>   
>> My current home workstation has three SATA drives using the Linux "MD" 
>> RAID5 drivers.  It works quite well, but when I start doing file IO, the 
>> system gets sluggish because of the overhead of the RAID5 driver.
>>     
>
> Only 3? I've never had any major slowdowns on heavy writes, but I've
> always used RAID5 with 4+ drives on dual CPU machines...
>
>   
>> I'm thinking of re-installing and using a true hardware RAID controller 
>> (I'm not interested in the quasi RAID controllers that some cards have 
>> that still require a software driver).  I have heard people recommend 
>> 3Ware, but are there any others that you've had good luck with?
>>     
>
> Keep in mind that *any* true hardware RAID card will be expensive - 4
> port SATA RAID is ~$300, 8 port SATA RAID is ~$400-500, and then there's
> the ~$130 battery module for the controller write cache.
>
> I use the LSI Logic MegaRAID SATA 300-8X RAID card with good results:
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118059
>
> Uses the same drivers and management utilties as the MegaRAID SCSI RAID
> cards.
>
> I've heard good things about the Areca RAID controllers, but I haven't
> used any of 'em.
>
> If you're going to go 3ware I wouldn't go with anything older than a
> 9550 series controller - among other things those were the first to
> support NCQ.
>
> I tend to avoid Adaptec RAID controllers like the plague. At one point
> in time their RAID controllers were decidedly Linux unfriendly
> (specifically their 2120S U320 SCSI RAID card and similar vintage SATA
> RAID controllers), but I haven't tried anything newer.
>
>