[CentOS] SCSI controller suggestions for a 5.x server?

Rob Lines rlinesseagate at gmail.com
Thu Dec 13 21:43:05 UTC 2007


Sorry for the delay.  I have been out of the office for a few days.

On Dec 5, 2007 10:11 PM, John R Pierce <pierce at hogranch.com> wrote:

> Rob Lines wrote:
> > We are preparing for a new file server (Dell 2970) with an external
> > disk array with integrated RAID (raidking.com <http://raidking.com>).
> > The array presents via Ultra 320 SCSI.  We are looking for anyone that
> > has had experience or opinions on SCSI cards without RAID that have a
> > good performance working under CentOS 5.x.  Any suggestions/comments
> > on the controllers with large storage especially at or above 2tb would
> > be appreciated.
>
> the dell 2850's I've been bringing up have a dual channel LSI Logic
> ultra320 scsi controller built in, these work quite well.     I don't
> know offhand if they have an external scsi connector, however.   I'd
> suggest the equivalent LSI Logic SCSI card, I believe its the 53C10xx
> series, in PCI-X or PCI Express X4, whichever your server has...
>
> someone else said PERC, those are Dell's raid controllers, obviously not
> what you want with an external SCSI RAID
>
> I'm curious why you chose SCSI instead of SAS at this point in time?
> External SCSI cabling is expensive and trouble-prone.   _ALWAYS_ make
> sure _EVERYTHING_ is shut off completely before touching those external
> cables.     Don't cheap out on the cables, either.
>
>
In our case it is because the enclosure we are using has all the RAID
support built into it.  So it presents to the computer as a scsi 320.  The
enclosure itself is all SATA drives. In our case we had need for a large
volume of drive space with as simple a solution for DR as possible and an
attempt to minimize the reliance on support for the RAID card.  We currently
have an adaptec with two external drive enclosures that gives us a hard time
periodically and is most likely related to the age of the installed OS but
we didn't want to deal with the same thing in a couple years.

We did have the option of it presenting with fiber channel but as we only
have a single machine that will be connected to it that seemed like a more
complicated and expensive solution for little to no advantage.

Thank you for the suggestions on the cards.  They were the same family that
the company supplying the enclosure suggested.  I was really concerned with
having support for it without a lot of extra work and worry every time a new
kernel was released.

Thanks for all the help,
Rob
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