From owner-freebsd-stable Fri Apr 28 4:57:20 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from wat-border.sentex.ca (waterloo-hespler.sentex.ca [199.212.135.66]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5520937BF2D for ; Fri, 28 Apr 2000 04:57:15 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mike@sentex.net) Received: from granite.sentex.net (granite-atm.sentex.ca [209.112.4.1]) by wat-border.sentex.ca (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id HAA41426; Fri, 28 Apr 2000 07:57:12 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from mike@sentex.net) Received: from chimp (ospf-mdt.sentex.net [205.211.164.81]) by granite.sentex.net (8.8.8/8.6.9) with ESMTP id HAA05734; Fri, 28 Apr 2000 07:57:11 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <4.2.2.20000428074518.03404fa0@mail.sentex.net> X-Sender: mdtancsa@mail.sentex.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.2.2 Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2000 07:56:07 -0400 To: Mark Powell , freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG From: Mike Tancsa Subject: Re: How good is AMI MegaRAID support? In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG At 12:22 PM 4/28/2000 +0100, Mark Powell wrote: >As the DPT SmartRAID IV controllers are now obsolete, what's the best bet >for hardware RAID under FreeBSD? From a bit of reading the AMI >controllers seem to be well featured and regarded. Just how good is the >support for these controllers in 4.0R? I'm trying to hold off using 4.x on >any servers until I've used 4.0R for a while to become familiar with it >and more specifically until 4.1R is released. If you are using 3.x you might as well start using 4.x in production, as it is as stable if not more as the 3.x branch was/is. As for RAID support, I would say take a look at the Mylex cards. In comparing two older models (the AMI 428 vs the DAC960P/PD) the found the performance differences minor, if not insignificant. Similarly, the feature set is not *that* different and might be irrelevant for you-- Especially if all you want is RAID 0,1,5 ) You might want to pick up a Mylex and a AMI off of E-Bay cheap and test them out for your self. I have been using 4.x for our internal Squid proxy with great results. I didnt have problems with the AMI card, except that I could artificially wedge it under high load. There have been new patches to the driver, so its possible the problem has been fixed, but I havent had time to test that. For us the plan is to replace our main production servers with 4.x as soon as we have the time to do it with Mylex cards where appropriate. ---Mike To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message