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

[Francisco Reyes]

Charles Sprickman writes:

> 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

We just got a machine with a 9550SX on it.
It was a hassle installing FreeBSD on it. Had to boot a loadable module from 
a floppy. Once the machine was upgraded to 6 Stable it was fine since the 
driver for the card was added in early December to the source tree.


> , but there's also a brand that I have not 
> heard of before called "Areca": 
> http://www.areca.com.tw/index/html/index.htm

I have read very good reviews and good feedback on other lists. Also they 
are one of the few cards that can do RAID 6 (parity distributed to 2 disks).

The reason we went with 3Ware in the latest server is because the vendor of 
the machine mentioned that 3Ware had a unique technology which would better 
safeguard the data upon power loss. He said that one would have to turn off 
the cache in the Areca to be as safe as the 3Ware.. and that the 3Ware with 
cache enable was safe.. as long as one got power back before the card 
batteries ran out. 

 
> These are getting very positive reviews, and Areca's benchmarks claim that 
> they beat out 3Ware as well.

Have seen a few reviews where the Areca's did better, but according to the 
an engineer where we bought our latest server the 3Ware 9550SX outperforms 
the areca offerings.