[Pc_Support] Re: Talking with a client about cheap storage

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Thu, 2005-10-13 at 21:16 -0700, Craig White wrote:
> > Thinking that I would get perhaps 2 external 4 drive or 1-8 drive
> > enclosure with the above card...
> > 
> > 1 - is it a dog in RAID 5 ?

Hardly.  The XScale superscalar microprocessor pushes some serious data
around.

> > 2 - other than the mess of 8 cables between external enclosure and LSI
> > card, is there something else I have to consider?

There are multi-lane concentrators for SATA, pioneered by 3Ware, that
turns 4 ports into 1 cable.  

But if you're concerned about external cabling, then consider SAS
(Serial Attached SCSI) instead.  Most SAS cards not only do SATA as well
as SAS drives, but they typically have hardware RAID-0, 1, 1e and/or 10
built-in.

> > 3 - I would expect this to work with CentOS 4.x - I have been able to
> > get the CERC controller to work no problem. Any fears ?

LSI Logic has been excellent at supporting Linux, their newer XScale
products included.  Not totally satisfied with their monitoring tools in
Linux though, but they are far, far better than the majority out there
(sans 3Ware).

BTW, 3Ware has introduced a real _powerful_ card in the Escalade 9550SX
series with a serious PowerPC embedded microprocessor on-board.  It's
the same cost as the existing 9500S series, but moves 2x as much data in
RAID-5 thanx to the PPC.  The only kicker with 3Ware is that I typically
wait 6-9 months for their firmware to "shake out."

  http://www.3ware.com/products/serial_ata2-9000.asp  

They can also do PCI-X @ 133MHz.  The previous 8506 and 9500S only did
64-bit PCI @ 66MHz.

> didn't get a reply to this but sometimes your emails end up in my
> spambox (think that your yahoo account scores fairly close to spam) and
> usually, you are very quick to reply.

Sorry, I work about 12-16 hours/day, and in many cases, I work a spurt
of 8-10 hours without a break.

-- Bryan

CC:  PC_Support list (where I typically post on hardware)


-- 
Bryan J. Smith     b.j.smith at ieee.org     http://thebs413.blogspot.com
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