[geeks] Recommendations for RAID

[Patrick Finnegan]

On Thursday 08 April 2010, Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
> Hi everyone.  I'm looking for one of two possible solutions to a
> problem.  I have a Sun A5200 and 22 300GB FC-AL hard drives.  I need
>  a raid controller to talk to them.  The optimal setup would be a
>  multichannel FC-AL RAID controller that sits in a PCI-X or
>  PCI-Express connector.  The second option would be an external box
>  that talks over multiple FC buses to the A5200 and performs all RAID
>  functions, and talks over a couple of FC buses to the host.
> 
> Any suggestions as to which device would work for me?  My OS is
>  NetBSD, so any internal RAID card would have to work there.  I
>  suppose the best would be the Mylex eXtremeRAID 3000, but it seems
>  to have been discontinued, and I can't find one.

FWIW, Software RAID on a machine made in the past 5 years is going to 
easily out-perform any sort of external RAID controller or PCI(e|X) card 
that costs less than $1000.  At least that's my experience with stuff at 
work, using Linux.  I don't know how much (if any) NetBSD software RAID 
sucks.

That said, I'd go with a dumb HBA or two and use an external RAID 
controller if you can find one, and don't want to do software RAID.  The 
least spendy option will probably be something built into a disk tray 
itself, like the LSI/Engenio controllers/trays that everyone and their 
brother re-badges, and you should be able to loop additional RAID boxes 
off of that (maybe even the A5200 will work).

Or, look for an IBM FAStT setup on ebay... like a 1742-blah.

Pat
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