# Low profile SATA card



## xy16644 (Aug 16, 2012)

I currently use a HP dc5800 SFF for my FreeBSD server which has one low profile PCI slot in it.

Can anyone recommend a low profile PCI SATA card that has 2 SATA ports on it (no more than 4 SATA ports) and works with FreeBSD 9? I don't need/want any RAID.

Thanks! :e


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## SirDice (Aug 17, 2012)

Have a look at the Promise TX4 SATA-300 (4 ports internal) and/or the Promise TX4302 SATA-300 (2 internal, 1 external) cards. Both come with low profile brackets and should work with FreeBSD 9. They are relatively cheap too, which is always a plus :e

http://firstweb.promise.com/product/product_detail_eng.asp?product_id=139
http://firstweb.promise.com/product/product_detail_eng.asp?product_id=168


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## wblock@ (Aug 17, 2012)

The dc5800 specs say it has two low-profile PCIe slots also.  Those should be preferred over PCI.


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## xy16644 (Aug 17, 2012)

I missed that, thanks! So, any recommendations for a PCI low profile SATA card with 2 or 4 ports that will fit in this type of machine?


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## gkontos (Aug 18, 2012)

Stay AWAY from the Promise SATA TX4 controllers! Seriously, there are complains all over the Internet about them,  and a few PRs that have been left opened for years.

I would go for a low profile LSI based card. Just make sure it runs under the mps(4)() driver.


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## olav (Aug 20, 2012)

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Astrotek...27?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_15&hash=item3cc75bd80b

Cheaper version:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Low-profile...t=US_Drive_Cables_dapters&hash=item35b6e30cf4

Based on asm1061 which works great with FreeBSD and offers good performance.


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## xy16644 (Aug 29, 2012)

Thanks for the links and suggestions. I was looking at:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Low-Profi...Components_InterfaceCards&hash=item3cc9cd3b26

I assume this card will fit/work in my machine and work with FreeBSD 9? It has the chipset you mentioned.


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## olav (Aug 30, 2012)

Yes it will work without any setup


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## xy16644 (Aug 30, 2012)

olav said:
			
		

> Yes it will work without any setup



Aaah, thanks for that. Just wanted to check.

I thought I'd give a bit more background as to what I am wanting to do. Currently I run an i386 FreeBSD 9 server on an HP dc5800 desktop. In this machine I run two 320GB 5400RPM 2.5" drives mirrored with ZFS and GELI for encryption. As I have posted elsewhere the performance isn't bad...its just not great. This is due to my CPU not supporting AES-NI and/or the slowish disks I have. I also have a single ZFS GELI disk but thats used purely for backups (500GB 7200RPM).

So this week I so on a local web site that they are selling these:

OCZ Vertex 2E 120GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive 

for Â£37 each! So what I wanted to do was buy 4 of these and setup a striped mirror ZFS GELI pool (about 200GB of usable space). I can connect all 4 of these drives to the SATA ports on the motherboard (I don't use an optical drive in this machine). I was then going to use the SATA PCI Express card for the backup drive.

To fit all these drives in this desktop chassis I was going to use this bracket:

Lian Li BZ-525B 5.25" Rack to 4 x 2.5" Adapter

So my question is, will I see a nice performace boost in my server going from slowish 5400RPM drives to using SSD drives? This may sound like a silly question but the only reason I ask is because I am new to running GELI. I have gone from a 5400RPM drive to SSD in my laptop and that was a HUGE improvement but what can I expect in FreeBSD when everything (except /boot) is encrypted with GELI? 

Thanks for any comments or suggestions! :e

PS: I did look at the Soekris hardware encryption card but its silly expensive for me to buy it and ship it over here!


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## wblock@ (Aug 30, 2012)

There will be some performance improvement from the near-zero seek times on the SSDs.  But without AES-NI, encryption will still be the bottleneck, not drive bandwidth.


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## xy16644 (Aug 30, 2012)

wblock@ said:
			
		

> There will be some performance improvement from the near-zero seek times on the SSDs.  But without AES-NI, encryption will still be the bottleneck, not drive bandwidth.



I was afraid someone would say that! Its a pity there aren't more AES-NI addon cards like the Soekris one at more affordable prices. I'm not willing to give up GELI encryption now that I have it so AES-NI is the only way forward to improve performance then.

Decisions decisions...


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## wblock@ (Aug 30, 2012)

$75 is cheaper than the new computer you'd need to support a processor with AES-NI.  If you have to have GELI, and can't live with the unaccelerated speed, there aren't a lot of options.


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