[nycbug-talk] 2x 3Ware Escalade 9500S-4LP SATA

[Isaac Levy]

Hi Charles,

*THANK YOU* very much, (my time spent with the 3Ware SATA cards feels  
wasted at this point- they are still for sale, all shiny and such, if  
any OpenBSD folks want them...)

On Dec 27, 2005, at 2:42 PM, Charles Sprickman wrote:

>
>> I have 2 of these cards still, and have been mucking about just  
>> trying to get *any* kind of install to happen using them with  
>> FreeBSD (their specs are *soooo* much nicer than my Adaptec cards,  
>> at the same price...)
>
> Ike,
>
> I've been following some discussions on the Postgres-performance  
> list since I'm needing to think about chaning our RAID build  
> (currently Adaptec ZCR SCSI stuff).  I'm kind of seeing some  
> serious slagging of traditional SCSI host-based RAID controllers  
> there - the on-card processors don't seem to be keeping pace with  
> the scsi chain, newer drives, or modern computing in general...   
> Notice how NO ONE that sells host-based RAID cards posts any  
> benchmarks in their sales/tech slicks...??
>
> That said, many there are talking about SATA RAID.  These are  
> database people, mind you, who are very picky about storage.  The  
> 9500 series cards are very highly recommended, but there's also a  
> brand that I have not heard of before called "Areca": http:// 
> www.areca.com.tw/index/html/index.htm

"Easy RAID Management
The controller firmware also contains McBIOS RAID manager can access  
via hot key at BIOS boot-up screen and browser-based McRAID manager  
that can access from local and remote through the Http Proxy server  
in Windows, Linux, FreeBSD environment."

Neat!

"Greater than 2TB per volume set to support 64-bit LBA OS"

Sick...  This made me very sad with the other raid options- (when  
using a 16 channel SATA card from Adaptec...)

> These are getting very positive reviews, and Areca's benchmarks  
> claim that they beat out 3Ware as well.  FreeBSD is mentioned  
> throughout their site, and the driver author for FreeBSD is an  
> Areca employee.
>
> Just thought I'd share this...
>
> Charles

Thanks again Charles!

Rocket-
.ike