On 03/01/2011 06:41, Stan Hoeppner wrote: [...]
Go with one or two of these SATA II port multipliers with 1 host interface and 5 drive interfaces--perfect for a 10 drive setup with two 5 drive cages. http://www.addonics.com/products/host_controller/ad5sapm.asp http://www.buy.com/prod/addonics-ad5sapm-serial-ata-controller-5-x-7-pin-serial-ata-300-serial/q/loc/101/213272437.html http://www.siliconimage.com/products/product.aspx?pid=32 If your mobo SATA ports support FIS based switching, this PMP will give you 5 SATA II drive ports. It doesn't use a PCI slot of any kind. No additional software required. No kernel driver issues. 300MB/s is sufficient for 5 drives in an mdraid setup isn't it?
For a backup array, yes, but I'm not sure it is for online storage. 300MB/s is an absolute max and there's protocol overhead etc, but even if it's minimal we're still looking at no better than 50MB/s per drive, while the drives can manage 125MB/s these days.
I doubt my motherboard supports FIS PMPs. It's an Asus P5Q Pro, Intel P45+ICH10R, and I'm pretty sure the ICH10R doesn't support PMPs even if the original spec said it would.
There is a Marvell 88SE6121 SATA+IDE chip on there but it's currently in IDE-only mode for the DVD drive and even if I switched over to SATA mode and a SATA DVD drive that'd only give me one more SATA port. But it might work with a FIS PMP, I suppose.
When I use these I remove the slot bracket and mount the PCB directly to my server chassis side wall using mobo type standoffs. You may need to drill a couple of holes in the chassis depending on where you decide to mount it. If you're not a mechanically inclined DIY type person, just use the supplied mounting bracket. This may deny access to an underlying PCI slot though. I prefer the more solid mount and having all slots available.
I'd do that too - no problems doing case mods here. I suppose it's possible the mounting holes might be able to be made to line up with some of the mounting holes on the side of the hot-swap chassis. On the other hand I might cheat and use the little plastic mounts with double-sided tape on their feet.
[...]
The driver for the Marvell chip is present in kernel 2.6.19 and later. Considering that 2.6.19 is like 6 years old, I'd hope your kernel is newer.
It's kernel-2.6.18-194.26.1.el5 so it's stuffed full of backports and security updates, it's less than two months old. Yes, I have sata_mv, but several people have reported data corruption issues with some Marvell controllers - a bad interaction with SMART I think.
It may be a little more money than you were planning on spending, but for little more than the cost of one hard drive
In this case I'm using consumer-level drives so they're about Â40 ($60), so $165 is a bit rich for me, especially since it's potentially limited for throughput.
Nevertheless, thank you very much for taking the time for such a considered reply.
Cheers, John. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
