On Thu, 03 May 2012 12:21:17 -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote: > On 5/2/2012 11:30 AM, Ramon Hofer wrote: >> On Tue, 01 May 2012 15:43:13 -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote: >> >>> On 5/1/2012 12:37 PM, Ramon Hofer wrote: >>> >>>> I have the RPC-4220 case with 20 howswap slots. >>> >>> You should have mentioned this sooner, as there is a better solution >>> than buying 3 of the 9211-8i, which is $239*3= $717. And you end up >>> with one SFF8087 port wasted. >>> >>> Instead, get a 24 port Intel 6Gb SAS expander: >>> http://www.provantage.com/intel-res2sv240~7ITSP0V8.htm $238.24 >>> >>> and the LSI 9240-4i, same LSISAS2008 chip as the 9211-8i: >>> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118129 >>> $189.99 >>> >>> Total: $429 >>> >>> W/4 extra SFF8087 cables (assuming you already have 2): >>> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816116093 $60 >>> >>> Total: $489 >>> >>> This solution connects all 20 drives on all 5 backplanes to the HBA, >>> and will give you ~1.5GB/s read throughput with 20 7.2k RPM drives >>> using md RAID 5/6, and ~800MB/s with hardware or md RAID10. >>> >>> You connect the SFF8087 of the LSI card to port 0 of the SAS >>> exapander. >>> You then connect the remaining 5 ports to the 5 SFF8087 ports on the >>> 5 >>> backplanes. >> >> Thanks alot for the suggestions. I have found a shop where I live and >> will order them tomorrow. Do you have experience with these cards? > > Hi Ramon, > > Yes. Note that the Intel SAS expander has a PCIe x4 edge connector on > the PCB and it also has a standard 4 pin Molex connector. The PCB has > mounting holes to allow mounting it directly to your chassis via > motherboard style brass or plastic stand-offs. This method may likely > require drilling holes in your chassis. I often use this method to > avoid wasting a PCIe slot. If you have plenty of free PCIe x4/8/16 > slots mount it in one as it's much easier. Note only power is drawn > from the PCIe slot. There is no data xfer. Data xfer occurs only via > the SFF8087 ports. Here's the manual: > http://download.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/sb/ e93121003_res2sv240_hwug.pdf > Nice picture and info: > http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/servers/raid/raid-controller- res2sv240.html > > Using the LSI 9240-4i HBA will be very similar to using the SuperMicro > Marvell based SAS card, but better. Simply enter the BIOS at boot and > configure the drives as you wish. This card is a real hardware RAID > controller, not fakeraid, so you can use it as such. It simply lacks > cache memory and the more advanced RAID features of LSI's higher end > RAID cards. You can even install Debian onto and boot directly from a > RAID volume on this card. If you wish to use mdraid instead, configure > the drives as JBOD so md can see the individual drives. > > If you choose to use the hardware RAID feature, note that you can have a > maximum of 16 drives per RAID volume. Thus, if you have 20 drives in > that chassis, you'd want to create two RAID5 or two RAID10 volumes. If > you use a separate boot/OS drive, you can do two hardware RAID5 arrays, > then create an md linear or RAID0 array of these two hardware volumes so > you have a single file system across all the drives. Lots of > possibilities. All the info you could want/need for the 9240 is here: > http://www.lsi.com/products/storagecomponents/Pages/ MegaRAIDSAS9240-4i.aspx
Thank you very much for all the information and the suggestion of the cards. I've just ordered them :-) What would you suggest: Using the hardware raid functionality or use mdadm? I already used mdadm for some time now and like the ability to change the arrays whilst the system is running. Can I do this with the hardware raid too? Thanks again Ramon -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/jnujnn$rq8$2...@dough.gmane.org