Recommended hardware raid card?

[titan_rw]

Posting in off-topic as this obviously is not freenas related at all.

I've got a bunch of ibm m1015 cards for freenas, and as they work great as hba's, they do leave a lot to be desired as a hardware raid card. I'm wondering what would be a good raid card for use primarily under windows?

I'm looking for raid 0 performance (ssd's), and possibly raid 5/6 performance (spinning disks).

Are the LSI 9260 rebrands a good choice? This would include ibm 5014 and 5015 I think. They're about $170 cdn on ebay, which is far better than the ~$600 for the actual lsi one.

8 ports would just be enough, and I don't really see any 16 port versions unless you go to the actual lsi branded one which bumps the price way up. I know a port expander is an option, but kinda wanted to stay away from that. I think I'd rather live with 8 ports than need an expander.

Any other brands / models I should look at?

 

[cyberjock]

I've heard the LSI 9260s are pretty good cards. I've never used one before, but I know a few people that have used them and they're apparently rock solid and perform very well. At $170 I'd consider them to be an excellent investment for hardware RAID.

 

[jgreco]

The thing to note is that without a BBU or cachevault module, the write cache on these should remain disabled unless you don't mind some possible corruption. This significantly impacts write performance.

The M5015 IIRC only has 512K of memory; the M5016 is based on the 2208 and has 1GB plus CV support, making it a better deal if you can find one at a reasonable price.

 

[titan_rw]

Thanks jgreco. I googled it, but couldn't see what CV stands for.

For the windows machine, I'm ok with the write cache enabled without a BBU. I have daily backups of it anyway.

I'm contemplating using one for a local datastore on my esxi host too. I'd prefer a bbu for that, but it's also backed up daily, and it is only a home setup anyway.

I assume the m5016 (lsi 9265 equiv?) is supported in esxi 5.5? I'd be hooking up 8 10k sas drives in a large raid 10.

Looking at the 5016/9265's, some of them seem to have an addon board at the back of the card, with what looks like dram chips. Is that what gives it 1GB vs 512?


Thanks again.

 

[jgreco]

CV = CacheVault. Instead of a BBU it uses a capacitor and some flash to write out and store the data after a powerloss. Anyone who uses the BBU's know they kinda suck and have a limited lifetime.

CC = CacheCade. This is LSI's variation on Intel's Smart Response Technology, or ZFS's L2ARC or whatever.

These are both licensed features for which LSI issues you an enabler code for your card, if it isn't already included.

The M5016 should be well-supported in ESXi 5.5. I haven't tried it. IBM does tend towards doing their own firmware variant for the ServeRAID cards, so that's probably the sticking point if any. The LSI2208 works swimmingly well with ESXi 5.5 and IBM makes machines that are targeted at virtualization. I would be shocked if it was an issue.

No clue what the daughtercard is offhand. Cache RAM or flash for the CV would be the logical possibilities.

The 2208 is probably the hottest 6Gbps RAID controller available, given the various options. However, I'm sorely tempted to knock it up to 3108, specifically this card

AOC-S3108L-H8iR

 

[jgreco]

Actually I'm an idiot. CV is not a licensed feature, it's a hardware addon. I was thinking FastPath.

 

[titan_rw]

I don't have any 12gbps devices, so I certainly don't need the 3108.

I'll see what I can find for 2208 cards though.

Thanks for the help.

 

[jgreco]

Well the real thing to consider is that you can get a 3108 with 2GB of cache, and the price isn't horribly far off the 2208. I tend to be willing to spend a little more not to be buying last year's technology, as long as there's something compelling, which additional cache is.

 

[titan_rw]

I'm not seeing any 3108 cards for any less than about $600. I did see 2208 based cards for around $240 though. Plus it looks like I'd need different cables and stuff for sas3.

You want to sell any of those "old, last years technology" 2208 cards? I'll take 'em off 'yer hands for cheap. 'out with the old, in with the new'.

 

[jgreco]

Sadly, no, the point was that if you're going to spend a lot of money on a card, it might make sense to spend a bit more money and have the latest thing with the faster tech. Our lifecycle for equipment is between 5 and 10 years in most cases, sometimes longer.

I *am* giving some thought to getting rid of some E3-1230 v1 gear, in what is a rare exception to that. The 32GB limit has turned out to be rather annoying at times.