Chris Mauritz wrote:
Just wondering if any 4.2 users out there have a favourite "dumb" PCI controller to add a couple of SATA ports to a motherboard that doesn't include SATA support. I'm not looking for anything fancy, just 2 SATA ports that a recent vintage kernel will recognize without a lot of configuration gymnastics. The intended use is for relatively light weight internet browser workstations for younger students.
I benchmarked a number of low-end sata controllers for add-on, JBOD applications, and found that some give significantly lower performance than others. One of the good cards performance-wise turned out to be based on a SiI 3112 chipset, delivering performance very similar to intel's ICH6 (i865-based) motherboard sata controllers, and better than any others I found. That being said, I have not been able to deploy that card in a PCI-X based system; it hangs the (64-bit PCI-X) bus and won't let the computer boot.
We use lots of 3ware sata controllers, and for jbod, they deliver significantly lower performance than either the ICH6- or 3112- based controllers.
So I'm also looking for a 'yeah, it's cheap, it just works, and it delivers the full performance of the disk' sata controller.
Dave Thompson The University of Wisconsin - Madison
David Thompson wrote:
Chris Mauritz wrote:
Just wondering if any 4.2 users out there have a favourite "dumb" PCI controller to add a couple of SATA ports to a motherboard that doesn't include SATA support. I'm not looking for anything fancy, just 2 SATA ports that a recent vintage kernel will recognize without a lot of configuration gymnastics. The intended use is for relatively light weight internet browser workstations for younger students.
I benchmarked a number of low-end sata controllers for add-on, JBOD applications, and found that some give significantly lower performance than others. One of the good cards performance-wise turned out to be based on a SiI 3112 chipset, delivering performance very similar to intel's ICH6 (i865-based) motherboard sata controllers, and better than any others I found. That being said, I have not been able to deploy that card in a PCI-X based system; it hangs the (64-bit PCI-X) bus and won't let the computer boot.
We use lots of 3ware sata controllers, and for jbod, they deliver significantly lower performance than either the ICH6- or 3112- based controllers.
So I'm also looking for a 'yeah, it's cheap, it just works, and it delivers the full performance of the disk' sata controller.
Well, these are just a bunch of old i810e and i815 boards running P3 processors on a standard PCI bus. So I'll have to find a guinea pig SiL3112 board to try (any particular brand?). I don't really even care if they're that cheap, but they're only going to be used as dumb controllers so RAID isn't really necessary. I donated a bunch of these systems to a school and agreed to help them integrate things with CentOS as the OS. Another donor bought a big box of SATA drives (the systems originally had a bunch of rather old 20gig quantum fireball drives) so I'm trying to help them combine both gifts without an undue amount of support for them down the road.
Cheers,
Adaptec have this pretty cheap SATA controller that uses the Sil3112, i'm not sure of the model but is on their website and i have seen them in computer stores here. I am cirtain that it uses a Sil311x chip.
Peter
Chris Mauritz wrote:
David Thompson wrote:
Chris Mauritz wrote:
Just wondering if any 4.2 users out there have a favourite "dumb" PCI controller to add a couple of SATA ports to a motherboard that doesn't include SATA support. I'm not looking for anything fancy, just 2 SATA ports that a recent vintage kernel will recognize without a lot of configuration gymnastics. The intended use is for relatively light weight internet browser workstations for younger students.
I benchmarked a number of low-end sata controllers for add-on, JBOD applications, and found that some give significantly lower performance than others. One of the good cards performance-wise turned out to be based on a SiI 3112 chipset, delivering performance very similar to intel's ICH6 (i865-based) motherboard sata controllers, and better than any others I found. That being said, I have not been able to deploy that card in a PCI-X based system; it hangs the (64-bit PCI-X) bus and won't let the computer boot.
We use lots of 3ware sata controllers, and for jbod, they deliver significantly lower performance than either the ICH6- or 3112- based controllers.
So I'm also looking for a 'yeah, it's cheap, it just works, and it delivers the full performance of the disk' sata controller.
Well, these are just a bunch of old i810e and i815 boards running P3 processors on a standard PCI bus. So I'll have to find a guinea pig SiL3112 board to try (any particular brand?). I don't really even care if they're that cheap, but they're only going to be used as dumb controllers so RAID isn't really necessary. I donated a bunch of these systems to a school and agreed to help them integrate things with CentOS as the OS. Another donor bought a big box of SATA drives (the systems originally had a bunch of rather old 20gig quantum fireball drives) so I'm trying to help them combine both gifts without an undue amount of support for them down the road.
Cheers,
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Peter Kitchener wrote:
Adaptec have this pretty cheap SATA controller that uses the Sil3112, i'm not sure of the model but is on their website and i have seen them in computer stores here. I am cirtain that it uses a Sil311x chip.
Newegg has a Koutech PSA150 that uses the sil3112 and costs $17.99. I'll pick one up to test with. If that works, it would be an ideal solution.
Cheers and thanks,
David Thompson thomas@cs.wisc.edu wrote:
We use lots of 3ware sata controllers, and for jbod, they deliver significantly lower performance than either the
ICH6-
or 3112- based controllers.
Of course. They are highest performing for RAID-0, 1 or 10. But they are damn compatible, that's the kicker.
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Bryan J. Smith -
Chris Mauritz -
David Thompson -
Peter Kitchener