zfs discuss - Jun 2009 - Best controller card for 2 to 4 SATA drives ?

Hi,

Does anyone know of a reliable 2 or 4 port SATA card with a solid driver, that
plugs into a PCIe slot, so that I can benefit from the high read speeds
available from adding a couple of SSDs to form my ZFS root/boot pool?
 (Each SSD is capable of reading at around 150-200 MBytes/sec)

After initially thinking I would move my existing 6-drive RAID-Z2 array to a new
8-port SATA controller, I finally decided to leave the drives connected to the
motherboard SATA ports, and instead to get an additional smaller SATA card to
allow me to connect 2 boot drives to form a mirror.

For anyone considering a controller card to support 8 SATA drives, see this
thread which has got some great comments from people experienced with using
these larger cards. No doubt I will refer to it again when I build another
storage system one day :)
See: http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=106210

Thanks,
Simon

http://breden.org.uk/2008/03/02/a-home-fileserver-using-zfs/
-- 
This message posted from opensolaris.org

I''ve had success with the SIIG SC-SAE012-S2. PCIe and no problems  
booting off of it in 2008.11.

On Jun 27, 2009, at 3:02 PM, Simon Breden <no-reply at opensolaris.org>  
wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Does anyone know of a reliable 2 or 4 port SATA card with a solid  
> driver, that plugs into a PCIe slot, so that I can benefit from the  
> high read speeds available from adding a couple of SSDs to form my  
> ZFS root/boot pool?
> (Each SSD is capable of reading at around 150-200 MBytes/sec)
>
> After initially thinking I would move my existing 6-drive RAID-Z2  
> array to a new 8-port SATA controller, I finally decided to leave  
> the drives connected to the motherboard SATA ports, and instead to  
> get an additional smaller SATA card to allow me to connect 2 boot  
> drives to form a mirror.
>
> For anyone considering a controller card to support 8 SATA drives,  
> see this thread which has got some great comments from people  
> experienced with using these larger cards. No doubt I will refer to  
> it again when I build another storage system one day :)
> See: http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=106210
>
> Thanks,
> Simon
>
> http://breden.org.uk/2008/03/02/a-home-fileserver-using-zfs/
> -- 
> This message posted from opensolaris.org
> _______________________________________________
> zfs-discuss mailing list
> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org
> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss

On Mon, Jun 29 at 11:43, Patrick O''Sullivan
wrote:
> I''ve had success with the SIIG SC-SAE012-S2. PCIe and no problems
> booting off of it in 2008.11.
I think there''s a 4-port version of the 1068e-based chips from LSI,
and I believe this is it:

http://www.lsi.com/storage_home/products_home/host_bus_adapters/sas_hbas/lsisas3041er/index.html

but I don''t have one on-hand to confirm.  The product brief states
"the LSISAS3041E-R leverages the LSISAS1064E controller ASIC''s
advanced Fusion-MPT architecture." so it appears to be the right
board.

Froogle lists it for about $150 from various websites.

--eric

-- 
Eric D. Mudama
edmudama at mail.bounceswoosh.org