# 12 port SATA controller



## mcbamse (Apr 22, 2010)

I'm looking for a 12 port SATA controller with a PCI E x8 or x16 slot.

The card should work without raid configuration and show 12 disks connected.

Any suggestions ?


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## User23 (Apr 22, 2010)

This depends on your goals.

--

If you searching for one controller card for 12 or more devices i would suggest 3ware.

http://www.3ware.com/products/serial_ata2-9650.asp
or
http://www.3ware.com/products/sas-9690sa.asp

http://www.3ware.com/products/sys_compatibility.asp


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## mcbamse (Apr 22, 2010)

Looks good 

12 port Single Disk controller card.


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## Terry_Kennedy (Apr 23, 2010)

mcbamse said:
			
		

> I'm looking for a 12 port SATA controller with a PCI E x8 or x16 slot.
> 
> The card should work without raid configuration and show 12 disks connected.


Another vote for the 3Ware card - I'm running the 9650SE-16ML version here (that's the 16-port card, 12-port is 9650SE-12ML). These use the modern multi-lane connectors instead of the old bulky Infiniband ones.

If you need multi-lane breakout cables, get the boxed "kit" version of the card. If you don't need 'em, save money and get the bare board. Everything else in the box can be downloaded from the LSI/AMCC/3Ware web site.

If you need multi-lane to multi-lane cables, you'll need to buy them separately - there's no boxed option for them.

This card has a BBU option (supposedly 72 hours). If you install that, you get the benefits of delayed write caching, even when exporting single disks (which is different than exporting JBOD disks - the latter disables all of the cool controller features).


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## Terry_Kennedy (Apr 23, 2010)

Not enough points to edit my posts, so...

I forgot to mention this is an 8-lane card.


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## User23 (Apr 23, 2010)

Terry_Kennedy said:
			
		

> This card has a BBU option (supposedly 72 hours). If you install that, you get the benefits of delayed write caching, even when exporting single disks (which is different than exporting JBOD disks - the latter disables all of the cool controller features).



Thats true. You need the BBU if you want to use the write cache without risk the loss of data in case of power fail.
If you dont use the write cache you got very poor performance like 7 MByte/s per disk.


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## phoenix (Apr 23, 2010)

That's mostly true.

The 3Ware cards support enabling/disabling the write cache on the individual disks, as well as three different modes for the write cache on the card itself.  You can enable/disable these however you want, regardless of whether or not the BBU is present.

You will get warnings if you try to enable the controller cache without a BBU, but it will still enable it (Performance profile).

For use in "JBOD" setups, however, you do have to use the "Single Disk" array option in order to use the controller cache, and not the actual JBOD mode (which turns the card into a "dumb" SATA controller).  Plus, you get full access to the 3dm2 and tw_cli configuration/monitoring utilities.


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## sub_mesa (Apr 24, 2010)

If he wants bare disks (dumb hba) then he doesn't need a full fledged RAID controller.

Probably closest to his demands are these HBA cards:
http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/AOC-USAS-L8i.cfm
http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/AOC-USAS2-L8i.cfm?TYP=E

These are UIO or inverted PCI-express x8. The 6Gbps controller is PCIe 2.0 meaning 4GB/s while the original is 2GB/s bandwidth; enough for a software RAID with HDDs for sure. These are 8 ports though, 12 ports is kinda a middle between 8 or 16. Remember: with ZFS or software RAID you can use any SATA port, including that on your motherboard. Those are the fastest SATA ports you can have anyways.

OP is your intent to use the controller with ZFS?


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## phoenix (Apr 25, 2010)

The nice thing about using a RAID controller is all the nice management features and admin interfaces, that "normal" SATA controllers don't provide.  While it's possible to setup the system to monitor the disks and whatnot, it's nice to not have to worry about it.  

That, and the extra 128-512 MB of cache on the controller helps.

RAID controllers also tend to have tighter timeouts for detecting drive issues.

However, it's all a balancing act between price, performance, ease-of-use, reliability, management, etc.


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## Matty (Apr 25, 2010)

sub_mesa said:
			
		

> If he wants bare disks (dumb hba) then he doesn't need a full fledged RAID controller.
> 
> Probably closest to his demands are these HBA cards:
> http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/AOC-USAS-L8i.cfm
> ...



more important question is which driver is used. ata or ahci


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## sub_mesa (Apr 25, 2010)

I would say if he uses ZFS he wants to have bare disks and not put ZFS on a hardware RAID.

Because if you do you'll lose many of the cool ZFS features:
- self-healing fixing corruption/BER (since ZFS can't access the redundant data)
- dynamic stripesizes (HW RAID knows about the stripes and they are static)
- copies=2 (no guarantee they will be stored on different disks)

For all intents and purposes, ZFS will treat a hardware RAID as a non-redundant drive that just has a higher MTTF. The smart thing to do would be a "dumb HBA" so ZFS can do the RAID and make use of these features.

If this is about UFS, then the hardware RAID can make sense, though geom raid5 driver is faster than Areca RAID5 for me; sequentially anyway, random was twice faster on areca. But if going this route i would highly recommend you get a BBU (battery backup unit) for that hardware controller as well.


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## mcbamse (Apr 25, 2010)

sub_mesa said:
			
		

> If he wants bare disks (dumb hba) then he doesn't need a full fledged RAID controller.
> 
> Probably closest to his demands are these HBA cards:
> http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/AOC-USAS-L8i.cfm
> ...



12 port is minimum.

12 disk 1-2 TB SATA disk connected.

I like the prices of this card, but to few ports.


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## phoenix (Apr 26, 2010)

sub_mesa said:
			
		

> I would say if he uses ZFS he wants to have bare disks and not put ZFS on a hardware RAID.



But, you can always use the RAID controller as a plain SATA controller, just with a lot of nice management features built-in.    Just because it's a hardware RAID controller, does not mean you *HAVE* to create a hardware RAID array.


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## Matty (Apr 26, 2010)

phoenix said:
			
		

> But, you can always use the RAID controller as a plain SATA controller, just with a lot of nice management features built-in.    Just because it's a hardware RAID controller, does not mean you *HAVE* to create a hardware RAID array.



does the raid controller with enabled write cache really out perform a normal sata controller when using zfs? and at what workload (seq or random read/write)

What does the raid controller cache do so different then lets say 4gb of arc cache?


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## sub_mesa (Apr 26, 2010)

mcbamse said:
			
		

> 12 port is minimum.
> I like the prices of this card, but to few ports.


So add two of these controllers? Still cheaper.

Are you going to use it for ZFS or conventional software RAID? If so, then you can use all available SATA ports; those provided by the chipset on your motherboard, from the supermicro controller i suggested and perhaps another controller. You can all combine those in one array, or pool.

Using Hardware RAID cards and then creating passthrough/JBOD disks would work too, but that would mean you use an expensive controller that adds little value except the onboard cache. You would also require a BBU to use write-back safely. For SSDs it might be limiting IOps also (areca appears limited to 70.000 IOps; one SSD). A RAID of SSDs is best done with software RAID.


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## User23 (Apr 26, 2010)

Matty said:
			
		

> does the raid controller with enabled write cache really out perform a normal sata controller when using zfs? and at what workload (seq or random read/write)
> 
> What does the raid controller cache do so different then lets say 4gb of arc cache?



I dont think that the raid controller cache will outperform a sata controller under high workload while using zfs.
The reason why i use these 3ware controllers for ZFS installations too is that they are working 24/7 stable. They dont have the highest performance, they are "expensive" but i never run into big trouble with one of those the past 10 years on FreeBSD. But i think for private use it is not necessary to buy such expensive things.


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## phoenix (Apr 26, 2010)

Matty said:
			
		

> does the raid controller with enabled write cache really out perform a normal sata controller when using zfs? and at what workload (seq or random read/write)



Couldn't tell you.  All of our servers use the same hardware and 3Ware controllers.



> What does the raid controller cache do so different then lets say 4gb of arc cache?



It's one more layer of caching.  The disk has an onboard cache (up to 64 MB).  The controller has an onboard cache (up to 1 GB).  ZFS has a second-level cache (L2ARC) of however many GB.  ZFS has a primary cache (ARC) of however many GB.  The application has a cache of however many MB/GB.

As you go down the stack, the cache gets smaller, but it also gets faster.


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## mcbamse (Apr 26, 2010)

sub_mesa said:
			
		

> If he wants bare disks (dumb hba) then he doesn't need a full fledged RAID controller.
> 
> Probably closest to his demands are these HBA cards:
> http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/AOC-USAS-L8i.cfm
> ...



So you say this card will support single disk?

http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/AOC-USAS2-L8i.cfm?TYP=E

I do not want to combine 2 or more disk, or mirror/striped anything.
No raid levels.


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## mcbamse (Apr 26, 2010)

and I forgot to mention.

Running XP pro and to be honest do not know what ZFS or HBA is.
I have messed around with RAID 0 and 5 before, but didn't like it.


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## DutchDaemon (Apr 26, 2010)

mcbamse said:
			
		

> and I forgot to mention.
> 
> Running XP pro and to be honest do not know what ZFS or HBA is.



Did you think this is a general hardware forum of some kind? We're here trying to support people using the FreeBSD operating system with hardware issues, and all replies will reflect that.. There are a trillion Windows hardware forums out there. Use those.


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