[geeks] Solaris RAID: Time for storage

[Lionel Peterson]

On Mar 13, 2009, at 2:45 PM, Shannon Hendrix <shannon at widomaker.com>  
wrote:

> I am going to add a RAID to my Solaris 10 machine.
>
> It doesn't need to be hardware RAID, I'm happy with ZFS.
>
> I would appreciate any recommendations on decent SATA controllers  
> that can work with an external drive.
>
> I don't want to run N cables for N drives, so I guess I'm looking  
> for esata interfaces. My only real worry is does esata have enough  
> bandwidth for 4-5 modern hard drives?

There are external cables that are designed to run four discrete SATA/ 
SAS channels, but eSATA cables only support multiple drives when you  
use port multipliers on the drive end.

I can't speak to actual throughput on a single wire eSATA to  
multiplier arrangement.

> Of course, reliability is more important than speed, so it's  
> probably not a big deal.

Nothing will be faster than the card slot you plug the controller into.

> For external cases, I'm looking for some not much larger than the  
> drives, so some of the ones you guys recommended recently will  
> probably work.  They don't need RAID support, just JBOD since ZFS  
> will be doing all the work.  Hopefully too that will make them  
> cheaper.

SansDigital and Addionics make some nice drive cabinets, typically  
four-drive desktop cases aren't priced too bad...

> The other issue is I'm running the 05/2008 version of Solaris 10.
>
> I am going to upgrade to either the last Solaris 10, or maybe the  
> latest OpenSolaris.
>
> I avoided OpenSolaris before because it had trouble with upgrades  
> and a few other things, but it seems much improved over the last  
> year.  It's moving pretty fast it seems.

My impression is that OpenSolaris has finally hit a critical point and  
is quite usable, I'm planning on cofiguring just such a box this  
weekend (JBOD, non-RAID SATA, OpenSolaris 2008.11)...

But, I first need to update the Seagate drive's firmware... (6x 1TB)

Lionel