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RAID Controller Shoot-Out

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the millions-of-bugs-scream-at-once dept.

mikemuch writes "ExtremeTech has a comparison with benchmarks of three RAID controllers from Adaptec, LSI Logic, and Promise, and along the way gives you a little refresher course on RAID in general and why you want to use it: faster throughput, longer uptime, and improved data security. Motherboard RAID controllers do well when there's 'very little or no load on the CPU, I/O bus, and memory bandwidth. But with heavy traffic and processor loads, the limitations of the shared bus and the benefits of intelligent RAID's integrated IOP and memory cache have a more significant impact.'"

1 of 88 comments (clear)

  1. *nix RAID Support by pilot1 · · Score: 4, Informative

    According to the OpenBSD i386 supported hardware website, out of the cards reviewed, only Adaptec and LSI cards are compatible with OpenBSD.
    However, Adaptec has refused to provide documentation so that the OpenBSD project may improve the drivers.
    "Note: In the past year Adaptec has lied to us repeatedly about forthcoming documentation so that RAID support for these (rather buggy) raid controllers could be stabilized, improved, and managed. As a result, we do not recommend the Adaptec cards for use."
    Other *nix variants might support the Adaptec and Promise cards a little more, but the hardware fully supported by OpenBSD is generally well-supported across all *nix variants.
    Out of the cards reviewed, only the one from LSI is worth buying. Adaptec may have a little support, but it's not a good idea to purchase any RAID cards from them until they start providing better documentation.