Re: PCI Express 2.0 SATA 3 host bus adapter
On 7/11/2013 10:03 PM, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
> On Thu, 11 Jul 2013, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
>>> 1. If you're buying enterprise RAID arrays, you should have matching disks
>>> and firmware, and they must be in the vendor approved list. Best to get
>>> them all from the same vendor.
>>
>> This is also true of quality PCIe RAID HBAs. LSI and Adaptec both
>> publish compatibility lists for not only certified drives, but also
>> storage enclosures, etc. Other RAID card vendors may do so as well, but
>
> I just went over the compatibility list for the 9260-4i (SSD-ready SAS RAID
> HBA), and it does list a lot of SATA devices, most of them enterprise SATA
> disks. It even has a few non-enterprise drives there, such as the
> Barracuda-XT, and also bog-standard SSDs from several vendors.
And drives not listed will likely work as well. The list simply
includes drives they've tested. There are way too many drives out there
to test them all. The listed drives are tested individually in a
harness and as a RAID set. LSI doesn't perform testing of arrays built
of dissimilar drives on the list and doesn't recommend doing so, as I've
stated.
>> I presented this information because the OP expressed a desire to
>> purchase a real RAID card, specifically an LSI. I presented the
>> information to help him avoid potential problems.
>
> Very well. I was answering from a SATA3 HBA point of view, and you were
> answering from a decent SAS RAID HBA point of view.
You must have missed my response where I recommended he use a plain HBA
and md RAID due to his usage scenario. I have attempted to steer him
away from a real RAID card for the same reasons.
>>> PS: I'd appreciate if you could list some of the HW RAID cards that are
>>> doing disk blacklisting, that's something nice to know so that I avoid
>>> buying one of them used for the home. I've seen HW RAID cards mark the HDD
>
> ...
>
>> I'm not going to spend my time researching and compiling a list of
>> current RAID cards, if any, that do this. The information I presented
>
> Fair enough. I just asked in case you remembered some of them, I wouldn't
> ask anyone to compile an exaustive list.
I don't know of any current RAID cards that do this. I'd guess that
those that did in the past caused so much negative customer feedback
that this feature was removed from future cards. There is true
enterprise gear that still does this. EMC for certain. They are
completely unscrupulous.
Their drives (relabeled Seagate and Hitachi with EMC tweaked firmware,
which simply prevents non EMC drives from being used in their chassis,
much the same as what Compaq used to do) have MSRP of ~$2500-4000 USD
each depending on capacity and spindle speed. Kicking and blacklisting
drives due to a minor hiccup makes them lots of money. And those
entities purchasing EMC have such immensely deep pockets they simply
don't care about $20K here and there for a few drives, when their SAN
chassis contains 600 such drives and cost many $millions when installed,
and $100K/year for the mandatory maintenance contract. Such customers
consist entirely of US Govt and Fortune 500 companies. Nobody else is
dumb enough, or has enough cash, for EMC's top shelf gear and engineered
lock-in.
--
Stan
Reply to: