[OmniOS-discuss] areca or lsi

[Günther Alka]

I have build a lot of OmniOS boxes and was involved in a lot of
hardware decisions. All of them are using LSI HBAs in raidless IT mode.

If there was ever a consensus in the Solarish world regarding disk 
controller than this:
- prefer pure HBAs, avoid hardware raid cards, use those with IT firmware
- avoid controller cache, ZFS needs full disk control especially with 
sync write -
   your regular RAM, used by ZFS is anyway larger and faster
- prefer LSI (nearly all Solarish ZFS boxes are using LSI) where you can 
expect the best driver quality

My own favourite on OmniOS is the LSI 9207 with PCI-E 3.0 and the new 
2308 chipset
They come out of the box with the desired IT firmware, no need to 
reflash like with other LSI controllers.

I would add:
If you need expanders, use LSI ones paired with LSI HBAs, use SAS disks 
with expanders
or if you intend to use Sata disks, prefer as much HBAs as needed 
without expander.

Gea


On 19.07.2013 00:48, Tobias Oetiker wrote:
> Folks,
>
> We are specing a new omnios server box ... and were just told by
> our vendor, that LSI HBAs were much slower (50%) than Areca Controllers
> running in JBOD mode ... and that they would therefore recommend
> Areca (we use areca for raid6 in linux boxes, but have never used it in JBOD
> mode with illumos, yet).
>
> Which controller would you choose for a new system ?
>
> cheers
> tobi
>


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