[ale] RAID card for home use?

[DJ-Pfulio]

On 09/28/2015 08:06 AM, Jim Kinney wrote:
> Be certain to get raid capable sata drives! Home user and "green"
> drives throttle back and appear as a dropped drive.
> 
> That AOC will ONLY work in a supermicro system. The slot is PCIe but
> the components are on the wrong side. Allows for good cooling in a 1U
> system with 2 cards stacked, 1 normal on top and 1 AOC. The AOC slot
> is always in the same plane as the motherboard and faces up.

Should work in a normal desktop PCIe x4 slot - use the "last slot". Not
a big deal if you don't have an add-on GPU. For me, the on-board IGP
from Intel CPUs is more than I need.

Can't speak for servers.  I haven't physically touched a server since
the 1990s.

Plus it is NOT a RAID card, so if that is mandatory, you don't want this.
OTOH, Linux SW-RAID is very good and with a quality JBOD card like this,
throughput is exceptional - unlike with many on-board SATA ports.
I have a Core i5 MSI MB that barely breaks 30Mbps in RAID1 and another
G3258 Gigabyte MB that easily does over 100Mbps for both desktop drives
and USB3 connected disks.  For media and backups, USB3 is fine, IME.

> 
> On September 28, 2015 7:57:31 AM EDT, DJ-Pfulio <DJPfulio at jdpfu.com>
> wrote:
>> LSI bought 3Ware about 5 yrs ago. There are quality, linux
>> supported cards from SuperMicro too for $120-ish.  The ZFS folks
>> love these: * Supermicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 Add-on Card, 8-Channel
>> SAS/SATA Adapter
>> 
>> $111 on Amazon today - add a $10 SAS-to-SATA conversion cable if
>> you want to use cheap drives.
>> 
>> Throughput is great, I hear from highly reputable sources.  My next
>> NAS build will get one of these cards.
>> 
>> On 09/28/2015 07:43 AM, Solomon Peachy wrote:
>>> On Mon, Sep 28, 2015 at 12:14:06AM -0400, Raj Wurttemberg wrote:
>>>> Valid point... I guess adding one more drive for RAID5 won't
>>>> break
>> the bank.
>>>> haha!
>>>> 
>>>> LSI Logic 9270-8i.... - Amazon: $565 - eBay: $160
>>> 
>>> I can't honestly speak for the LSI cards' robustness and Linux
>> support,
>>> but another option is to go with a 3Ware card.  Their Linux
>>> support
>> is
>>> top-notch.
>>> 
>>> For example, you can get a new 3Ware 9650SE-12ML for $70 on ebay,
>>> and
>> 
>>> that includes one breakout cable. Their newer 9690 and 9750 cards
>>> are
>> 
>>> better, especially if you're going full RAID6, but are more
>> expensive.
>>> 
>>> But if you're not going RAID5/6, using a fancy controller will
>>> buy
>> you
>>> better manageability (and in the case of RAID1 you'll always be
>>> able
>> to
>>> boot), at best the performance will be the same vs the onboard 
>>> controller.
>>> 
>>> (I've been using 3Ware cards for about 15 years now; a
>>> 9650SE-16ML is
>> 
>>> currently powering the system I'm sending this from.  I've not
>>> had a
>> 
>>> single controller-related failure with these things))
>>> 
>>> - Solomon
>>>