Re: SATA RAID 1 - which controller to pick?

From: v8625 (v8625_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 07/04/04 

Date: 3 Jul 2004 22:20:04 -0700

Well, I did a fall-back to 2.4.20-8 (RedHat 9.0) and got it to work. I
don't mount it automatically during boot since I only need it when the
backup jobs run. So all that raidstart, mount, unmount, raidstop, etc.
is done in the backup script. I didn't do any specific I/O testing,
but a couple of small backup jobs that I ran on it appeared to go
rather fast. Basically, it does the job for this specific task.
Unfortunately, I can't really say anything very intelligent about
running this 1210SA controller under Windows because I never tried it
under Windows. But one thing I would certainly double-check would be
if it's sitting in the PCI slot with its own IRQ or if it's sharing
that IRQ with something else..

rmon90223@hotmail.com (Revo) wrote in message news:<d285a739.0407012000.164f1d98@posting.google.com>...
> They would not even let me see their i/o benchmark figures, let alone
> release their source code for a driver, god forbid!
>
> BTW, I restarted testing the Adaptec 1210SA on freaking Windows.
> Because I could not get the Redhat driver working, and the Suse driver
> doesn't seem to work at all. Their Windows XP driver works perfectly,
> of course, after a full day and a half of IOMeter and no mishaps. But
> we thought against putting a Windows XP server in production, so we're
> testing Windows 2000 Server with their newest driver now.
>
> I noticed this started happening in the last 2 days of testing on this
> 1210SA card.. when I do a warm-boot (ctrl-alt-del) or hardware reset
> button, the 1210SA appears to hang during the bootup. If I do a total
> power off/on, then it initializes.
>
> Do you get this problem?? I don't recall it happening originally
> during my Redhat testing phase.
>
>
> v8625@hotmail.com (v8625) wrote in message news:<7c6d0c8e.0407010715.4c8c4982@posting.google.com>...
> > Not surprisingly, Adaptec provided the following answer on whether
> > they can provide either another prebuilt module or source code for
> > building my own:
> > "...the only prebuilt modules we have are posted on our website, also
> > we do not have source code for this as it is proprietary information."
> > Anyway, I always ask, just in case.
> > As for SCSI, I weaned myself off that back when fast IDE drives
> > appeared (ATA/100 and ATA/133) - they did RAID0 and RAID1 - good
> > enough for most solutions. SCSI is really an overkill for small
> > environments - any SCSI solution is still significantly more expensive
> > than SATA. And I don't expect it to come down any time soon. In fact,
> > I think SATA would continue to add speed and features (improved
> > signaling, native command queuing and other SCSI-like functionality)
> > and thus chip away at SCSI market from the low end.
> > Anyway, I am thinking if I have to reinstall the system - which is
> > what Adaptec guys originally suggested - I might as well get a new
> > Athlon-64 board with 4 on-board SATA inputs. Then again, I am not too
> > sure if the applications would work on 64-bit athlons, so maybe I'll
> > just fall back to 2.4.20-8 and save myself some time and effort (oh
> > yes, and about $750.00).
> >
> >
> >
> > rmon90223@hotmail.com (Revo) wrote in message news:<d285a739.0407010023.63f04026@posting.google.com>...
> > > Yep, I was looking for the same thing to compile into my own kernel!!
> > > Unfortunately, no source is released by Adaptec. So I had to fall back
> > > to using the 2.4.20-8 drive for that kernel release. I don't really
> > > care as long as thethe only prebuilt modules we have are posted on our
> > website, also we do not have source code for this as it is
> > proprietary
> > information.
> > drives don't crash. Since a newer kernel is just
> > > mostly for system patch issues. And right now, this SATA driver just
> > > isn't there yet.
> > >
> > > On the other hand!! I found out that if you buy the Adaptec RAID 2120S
> > > SCSI controller, and use a 2x SCSI drives mirror, it works PERFECTLY
> > > on the new Adaptec RAID 2120S Redhat 9.0 2.4.20-8 driver! The Bonnie
> > > I/O tester is still looping non-stop after 48 hours of continuous disk
> > > I/O testing. However, the price of that controller is much higher, as
> > > are the prices of the SCSI drives. It accomplishes our goal, but at a
> > > much higher price.
> > >
> > > It seems SATA is still too new to implement in production level
> > > environments.
> > >