Hardware RAID, alternative to a PERC 5/i?...

[jmdixon85]

So as the title says. I am looking for a hardware RAID card, just not a PERC 5/i as I have had nothing but trouble with the one I bought. And after doing my research it seems they have big compatibility problems with a lot of motherboards.

So this is what I need from a RAID controller:

1: Must be hardware! Not a HBA.

2: Must be PCIe (I need to replace my serverboard so PCI-X is a no-go)

3: Support a minimum of 8 SATAII drives

4: Have a cache (RAM).

I see PERC 5/i's going for cheap on ebay all the time, but I cannot find any card that is hardware RAID and has a cache for anywhere near the same kind of money. :bang head

Also a big bonus would be if the RAID card supported drives over 2TB, something the PERC 5/i can't do.

[mokrunka]

I own two of the 3Ware (now LSI) HW RAID cards (LSI/3Ware make the very best IMO). The model I have is the 9690sa-4i and 8e. Both support 127 drives (I believe), but if you just grab a mini-SAS to 4x SATA cable, you can run four drives straight from the card. The "e" and "i" in the part number means external and internal, respectively. The "4" and "8" mean four or eight drives, respectively (to scale to the 127 drives you would need additional hardware). I got both cards on eBay for around $150 (but they aren't common) used. They each have 512 Mb onboard RAM, and support a battery backup (sold seperately, lol). I can't speak to their speed with SATA devices, but with my 4x 73 Gb 15k Cheetahs in RAID 0, my read/write maxes around 700Mb/s. Considering the Cheetahs ran me $20 ea, used, I'd say this setup rivals any SSD someone can come up with for ~$250, plus you can use RAID appropriately for much better reliability.

Hope this helps.

[rrohbeck]

Both PERC and 9690 are a couple of years old now. There are HW RAID PERCs, they're based on LSI MegaRAID (88xx I think.) LSI/3ware 9690 is a very decent RAID controller. It can do about 500MB/s. Its successor is the 9750.
LSI 92xx are the latest and greatest right now but pricey.