Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2008 21:05:45 -0700 From: Jeremy Chadwick <koitsu@FreeBSD.org> To: Danny Carroll <fbsd@dannysplace.net> Cc: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Re: new server motherboard with SATA II Message-ID: <20080627040545.GA21856@eos.sc1.parodius.com> In-Reply-To: <486450DB.4000907@dannysplace.net> References: <486450DB.4000907@dannysplace.net>
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On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 12:30:51PM +1000, Danny Carroll wrote: > Hello all, > > I'm looking to set up a file server at our office. It's a small office > so price is a concern. Performance is also going to be important. > > The data will be replicated from another site so integrity of the data > is not paramount. For this reason I think I'll be able to run with ZFS. > I see it as a good opportunity to contribute to getting ZFS stable and > non-experimental. > > What I am really concerned about is the SATA support. > > If I look at AMD64 as an arch, does anyone have any experience with good > IO chipsets that can do full SATA-300? > > I don't mind if it is a on-board or if I get a good controller card so > long as I can get decent performance out of the Seagate Barracuda > 7200.11 drives. SATA150 and SATA300 both work just fine on FreeBSD, but its dependent upon what chipset you go with. I would strongly recommend you go with a board/system that uses Intel's ICH7, 8, or 9 southbridge. I have extensive experience using these in production environments, and they are very reliable, plus fast. FreeBSD works quite well with them. Second, I wouldn't bother considering using Intel MatrixRAID (which all of the above chipsets support) for any sort of failover for your root/OS disk, in case you're tempted to try it. FreeBSD has bugs pertaining to such support (see below Wiki URL for some examples). Third, I cannot recommend nVidia chipsets, because there have been numerous reports recently and in the past where the SATA disks are being detected as UDMA33. I believe there are some ATI/AMD chipsets which are doing the same. There is a rumour that the operational speed of the disks is still SATA150/300, and just that FreeBSD is labelling the negotiated speed wrong, but my recommendation is not to risk it. Fourth, because you'll likely have multiple disks in a ZFS zpool, you should probably be aware of the problem that haunts some users from time to time (re: DMA errors). http://wiki.freebsd.org/JeremyChadwick/ATA_issues_and_troubleshooting > I'd be willing to go with intel arch although from a ZFS perspective it > sounds like AMD64 is better. There was a recent discussion on developers@ (which is private) about some topics, which eventually lead into a discussion about ZFS, tuning, and a 2GB kmem limit in FreeBSD (which affects amd64 too). I can't copy the conversation/thread because developers@ has a strict "do not disclose" policy. We can discuss those topics separately here without issue -- I just mean I can't copy/paste what's already been said on another list. Just be aware you ***will*** need to tune ZFS on FreeBSD to make it as reliable as possible. -- | Jeremy Chadwick jdc at parodius.com | | Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ | | UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP: 4BD6C0CB |
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