Greetings all- I need to purchase a PCIe SATA or SAS controller(non-raid) for a Supermicro 2U system. It should be directly bootable. Any recommendations? The system will be running CentOS 5.4 as an LTSP system. Thanks! --Tim
2010/2/24 Tim Nelson <tnelson at rockbochs.com>:> Greetings all- > > I need to purchase a PCIe SATA or SAS controller(non-raid) for a Supermicro 2U system. It should be directly bootable. Any recommendations? The system will be running CentOS 5.4 as an LTSP system. Thanks!how about areca or 3ware controller? -- Eero
Tim Nelson wrote:> Greetings all- > > I need to purchase a PCIe SATA or SAS controller(non-raid) for a Supermicro 2U system. It should be directly bootable. Any recommendations? The system will be running CentOS 5.4 as an LTSP system. Thanks! > >LSI Logic 1032E or whatevr the P/N is, available for both PCI-X and PCI-E x4 slots, I believe. ignore the raid 0/1/10 feature if you don't want to use it.
Tim Nelson wrote:> Greetings all- > > I need to purchase a PCIe SATA or SAS controller(non-raid) for a Supermicro > 2U system. It should be directly bootable. Any recommendations? The system > will be running CentOS 5.4 as an LTSP system. Thanks!I've had good luck with a ATTO SAS PCIe HBA using with a tape library. The driver for this particular card wasn't included with CentOS at the time but might be with the latest version. http://www.attotech.com/ The drivers are open source, I have no past experience with ATTO it was recommended to me by a tape backup software vendor for their performance and stability under linux. I am using the "ExpressSAS H644 Low-Profile 4-Internal/4-External Port 6Gb/s SAS/SATA PCIe 2.0 Host Adapter" nate
Tim Nelson wrote:> Greetings all- > > I need to purchase a PCIe SATA or SAS controller(non-raid) for a Supermicro 2U system. It should be directly bootable. Any recommendations? The system will be running CentOS 5.4 as an LTSP system. Thanks! >is this for internal or external or both? how many SAS ports you need? do you need SFF x4 sas ports or discrete x1 sata ports (of course, the former can be converted to the latter with an 'octopus' cable). the LSI stuff I previously recommended covers a wide range of this, for instance, the 3081E-R has 2 internal SFF-8087 x4 connectors, the 9212-4i4e has a SFF8088 x4 external connector and 4 x1 SATA internal connectors, etc etc. you need to know what sort of chassis or backplane you're connecting to... most 2U servers have a drive backplane... these backplanes can connect to the HBA via a range of options, SAS supports a full multiplexor (eg 4 channels to 12 drives), while plain SATA only supports a simple expander (eg, 1 channel to 4 drives)
Tim Nelson wrote:> Greetings all- > > I need to purchase a PCIe SATA or SAS controller(non-raid) for a Supermicro 2U system. It should be directly bootable. Any recommendations? The system will be running CentOS 5.4 as an LTSP system. Thanks!Look at the Promise non-raid cards. I just bought a normal PCI Promise SATA300 TX4 card that just works and boots fine. I'm sure they have an equivalent for PCIe. http://www.promise.com/ Regards, Max
On Thursday, February 25, 2010 12:56 AM, Tim Nelson wrote:> Greetings all- > > I need to purchase a PCIe SATA or SAS controller(non-raid) for a Supermicro 2U system. It should be directly bootable. Any recommendations? The system will be running CentOS 5.4 as an LTSP system. Thanks! >Anything that uses a Silicon Image 3124 chip would do. The challenge is to find one that does not try to fleece you just for a fake-raid bios.
On 02/25/2010 12:31 AM, Christopher Chan wrote:>> >> I need to purchase a PCIe SATA or SAS controller(non-raid) for a Supermicro 2U system. It should be directly bootable. Any recommendations? The system will be running CentOS 5.4 as an LTSP system. Thanks! >> > > Anything that uses a Silicon Image 3124 chip would do.Just want to point out that most Jmicron kit makes for an excellent sata/sas port -> system bus; if all you need are ports to plug into. They have been ahci compatible for a long long time ( which means, just works in CentOS3, 4 or 5 ). - KB