I have build a lot of OmniOS boxes and was involved in a lot of
hardware decisions. All of them are using LSI HBAs in raidless IT mode.
If there was ever a consensus in the Solarish world regarding disk
controller than this:
- prefer pure HBAs, avoid hardware raid cards, use those with IT firmware
- avoid controller cache, ZFS needs full disk control especially with
sync write -
your regular RAM, used by ZFS is anyway larger and faster
- prefer LSI (nearly all Solarish ZFS boxes are using LSI) where you can
expect the best driver quality
My own favourite on OmniOS is the LSI 9207 with PCI-E 3.0 and the new
2308 chipset
They come out of the box with the desired IT firmware, no need to
reflash like with other LSI controllers.
I would add:
If you need expanders, use LSI ones paired with LSI HBAs, use SAS disks
with expanders
or if you intend to use Sata disks, prefer as much HBAs as needed
without expander.
Gea
On 19.07.2013 00:48, 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 ?
cheers
tobi
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