[CentOS] Re: Opteron Mobo Suggestions

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Wed, 2005-06-22 at 23:22 -0400, Juan Carlos wrote:
> Out of curiosity..... why a 3ware 8506-4 and not a 3ware 9500 4 port card?

A lot of people are reporting issues with them.

The 9500 series adds DRAM (to the existing ASIC+SRAM design of the
7500/8500 series).  There still seems to be a lot of maturity on the
part of the firmware.  I remember 3Ware played with RAID-5 quite awhile
on the 6000 series and they eventually had to develop a new ASIC (which
then appeared in the 7000 series) before they got it right.

At least a lot of people are still reporting issues, so until I hear
otherwise, I've been avoiding deploying the 9500.  I have only one in
use, which seems to be okay for its light duties.

Besides, the 8506-4 at RAID-10 will give you about the same performance.
You don't need any DRAM buffer for RAID-0, 1 or 10.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith                                     b.j.smith at ieee.org 
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