High quality RAID cards don't just perform simple passthrough, even thou we would expect this to be all that is needed in a ZFS implementation.
The controller will (at least in Areca's case) utilise writeback caching to improve performance, driver implementation is also a major factor in performance. We've seen significant performance improvements with firmware upgrades on Areca cards. On 19 July 2013 10:03, Saso Kiselkov <skiselkov...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 18/07/2013 23:48, Tobias Oetiker wrote: > > Folks, > > > > We are specing a new omnios server box ... and were just told by > > our vendor, that LSI HBAs were much slower (50%) than Areca Controllers > > running in JBOD mode ... and that they would therefore recommend > > Areca (we use areca for raid6 in linux boxes, but have never used it in > JBOD > > mode with illumos, yet). > > > > Which controller would you choose for a new system ? > > Hi Tobi, > > I'm using LSI exclusively, never had an issue with them. Their 6G SAS > HBAs are very affordable and remarkably solid. As for the ARECA vs LSI > debate, I'd contest that there's going to be any appreciable performance > difference. *IF* you're running in JBOD, the card should essentially be > a simple pipe for SCSI commands to the SAS bus with as little overhead > possible. I know for a fact that saturating a 6G SAS link isn't a > problem with LSI cards, so I'm somewhat at a loss as to where the > performance difference is supposed to lie. > > Cheers, > -- > Saso > _______________________________________________ > OmniOS-discuss mailing list > OmniOS-discuss@lists.omniti.com > http://lists.omniti.com/mailman/listinfo/omnios-discuss >
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