I've spent the better part of today doing various web searches in Google, searches in newegg.ca/ncix.com, digging through mailing list archives (-hardware and -stable), man pages, and vendor websites looking for well-supported SATA/SAS adapters for use in FreeBSD storage servers. These servers will be using ZFS, so will not need fancy RAID controllers (currently, we're using 3Ware 9550SXU and 9650SE RAID controllers, which are increasingly hard to buy and very expensive at $1200+ CDN). The chassis have hot-plug SATA backplanes, so can use multi-lane cabling or standard SATA cabling. So far, I've come across a nice selection of LSI and Promise controllers, that are in the $200 - $400 CDN range, and seem to fit the bill. However, I can't find anything that definitively states whether they are supported by FreeBSD 7.x or 8.x. Thus, my questions to all of you: Are any of the following supported by FreeBSD 7/8? If so, by what driver? And do you have any experience (good/bad/otherwise) with any of them? LSI SAS 9211-8i 8-port SAS/SATA PCIe LSI SAS 3081E-R 8-port SAS/SATA PCIe LSI SAS 3080X-R 8-port SATA/SATA PCI-X Promise SuperTrak EX12350 12-port SATA PCIe Promise SuperTrak EX16350 16-port SATA PCIe Promise SuperTrak EX16300 16-port SATA PCI-X Promise SuperTrak EX16650 16-port SAS/SATA PCIe Any recommendations on other SAS/SATA controllers to look at (just not anything with MegaRAID in the name)? -- Freddie Cash fjwcash@gmail.com
> ?LSI SAS 3080X-R ? ?8-port SATA/SATA PCI-XThis one uses LSI1068 chip which is supported by mpt driver. I'm using motherboard with an on-board equivalent of this and don't have much to complain about. I did see some CRC errors with SATA drives in 3Gbps mode, but those went away after updating firmware to 1.29.0.0. I've seen some comments on zfs-discuss mailing list that -IR variant of the firmware (the one that provides RAID0/1 capabilities) does have some stability issues and recommended going with simpler -IT version (just pass-through disks). --Artem
On Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:29:06 -0800 Freddie Cash <fjwcash@gmail.com> wrote
about Support for SAS/SATA non-RAID adapters:
FC> Any recommendations on other SAS/SATA controllers to look at (just not
FC> anything with MegaRAID in the name)?
I installed a Supermicro AOC-USASLP-L8i card here some days ago. Should be
even cheaper than the ones you mentioned and comes with a LSI chip
supported by mpt driver:
mpt0@pci0:6:0:0: class=0x010000 card=0xa68015d9 chip=0x00581000
rev=0x08 hdr=0x00 vendor = 'LSI Logic (Was: Symbios Logic, NCR)'
device = 'SAS 3000 series, 8-port with 1068E -StorPort'
class = mass storage
subclass = SCSI
I only installed it last week and cannot comment much on performance and
stability up to now.
cu
Gerrit
On 18 Nov 2009, at 10:17, Gerrit K?hn wrote:> Supermicro AOC-USASLP-L8i cardAll my childhood traumas magically went away when I bought this card. Recommended! Thomas
On 11/17/2009 7:29 PM, Freddie Cash wrote:> LSI SAS 3081E-R 8-port SAS/SATA PCIeI've had excellent luck with LSI cards in a moderate usage home environment. I've had the 3041 and 3081 and never had any issues with either card. I've never really stress tested them for performance with anything other than doing a zpool scrub on them but they've handled everything I've tried to do just fine. Hot swap also works correctly. Jonathan