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Choosing A SCSI Host-Bus Adapter

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SimGuy

Member
Joined
Jan 19, 2003
Location
Ottawa, Ontario
I'll admit right off the bat I've got very limited experience in SCSI.

I've tinkered with an old UW2 SCSI System in my current server cluster, but nothing more than hooking up cables and setting ID jumpers.

To go with my new server, I've managed to acquire a set of 7 SCSI HDD's:

-> 6x 18.2 GB IBM UltraStar 36LP's
-> 1x 9.1 GB IBM UltraStar 36 LP's.

They are 68-pin, LVD, U160 devices and cabling is included.

Problem is... I don't have a controller card to use these drives with. The system these drives will be placed into has the ability to use PCI-66/64-bit cards (Tyan Tiger MPX).

I'd require the card to be able to have Hardware RAID-0, RAID-1 and RAID-5 and support for U160, LVD devices. Things like a caching RAID controller and U320 support would be nice, but not absolutely necessary.

I'd want to setup the drives in the following manner:

9.1 GB for OS/Apps
6x 18.2 GB for RAID-5 data storage.

My question is: Who makes a relatively well-performing PCI-66 SCSI HBA that will do everything I need? 3Ware? LSI? Adaptec? Which one would be the best choice for my application.

Many thanks to all those who contribute :)
 
Unless you can spend a large amount of cash to get a really nice controller, I'd stay away from RAID-5. Reads are usually good, but on most affordable cards, writes are abysmal due to the controller processor bottlenecking from distributed writes and parity calculations.

If you have to have RAID-5, try to get at least a Strongarm processor at 233Mhz. These are better than the old i960s(100Mhz) for speed, but in no way compare to some of the modern controller processors at 600Mhz and faster.

If this is to be a dedicated server, let me suggest a different configuration. It will have less available space, but most people do not use SCSI for storage outside of enterprise structures. On the OS, use a 2 drive RAID-1 array for safety and generally good performance. Next, depending on the controller, either a pair of RAID-1 or a RAID-10 solution for speed and redundancy. Using a dual channel controller would be best, since the operations and drives can be spread over both channels.

For a decent solution, the LSI 20320 RAID kits are inexpensive, well performing, dual channel U320, PCI-X(backwards compatible) and available to newegg for 133.00 shipped(I didn't notice Canada till I posted, but probably available at around the same cost there).

For some mass storage, add a pair of large IDE drives run in RAID-1 from the other 64/66 PCI slot. You will need a RAID controller that is 64/66 capable to avoid degrading the 64/66 bus to either 32/33 or 64/33 speeds. Unfortunately, the MPX chipset is somewhat limited in terms of IO due to the lack of multiple peer PCI 64/66 buses and the chipset limitation on the bandwidth of the 32/33 PCI bus.
 
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