Re: Good/Bad RAID and SCSI controllers?

On Thu, 12 Dec 2002, Justin Clift wrote:

> Josh Berkus wrote:
> > Folks,
> >
> > I am hoping to start a thread where users post their experiences with
> > various RAID and SCSI controllers running Postgres. When completed,
> > I'll post it somewhere on Techdocs with a big disclaimer. I'll start it
> > off:
>
> Sounds like a really good idea. There's already the beginnings of a page on Techdocs for this too. ;-)
>
> Here's two thoughts that might be helpful, although they're not RAID.
>
> Advansys UW SCSI controller: Brain damaged. Won't let standard Seagate Cheetah 10k RPM drives operating at all without
> having SCSI Disconnection turned off, and speed is forced to a maximum throughput of 6MB/s. 100% not recommended.
>
> Adaptec 29160 Ultra160 controller, BIOS version 3.10.0: Seems nice. Everything works well, most stuff is automatically
> configured, supported by just about everything. Haven't done throughput benchmarks though.

I'll throw a vote in behind the SymBIOS / LSI logic cards. They are quite
stable and reliable, and generally faster than most other cards. I've got
an UW symbios card at home I'll have to truck into work to play with so I
can compare it to my Adaptecs here.

I picked it up on Ebay (the symbios card) for $30, and it had a network
interface on it too, but the guy didn't know what kind it was. Turned out
to be gig ethernet interface with the yellowfin chipset. not a bad deal,
when you think about it. poor thing gets to run my scanner, a tape drive,
and an old Plextor 12 Plex CDROM drive. I'd like to hook up something
with the gigabit nic someday while it's still considered somewhat fast.
:-)

For insight into the SCSI cards that Linux supports and what the
maintainers think, I highly recommend a tour of the driver source code
files. It's amazing how often the words "brain damaged" and "piece of
crap" show up there.