For what it's worth, I have 4 of those Supermicro 16 drive chassis's each having a single Areca 1160 card. They have been running without issue for about a year now (touch wood).
I also just build a 48 drive box using an AIC chassis and 3 Areca 1261 cards, but that has not been put into service yet. _________________________________________ Ron Jerome National Research Council Canada M-2, 1200 Montreal Road, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0R6 Government of Canada _________________________________________ > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > On Behalf Of Bruce Allen > Sent: April 17, 2008 2:39 AM > To: Gerry Creager > Cc: beowulf@beowulf.org; Bruce Allen > Subject: Re: [Beowulf] Big storage > > Hi Gerry, > > > Areca replacement; RAID rebuild (usually successful); backup; Areca > > replacement with 3Ware controller or CoRAID (or JetStor) shelf; > create > > new RAID instance; restore from backup. > > > > Let's just say we lost confidence. > > I understand. Was this with 'current generation' controllers and > firmware > or was this two or three years ago? It's my impression that (when used > with compatible drives and drive backplanes) the latest generation of > Areca hardware is quite stable. > > Cheers, > Bruce > > > > Bruce Allen wrote: > >> What was needed to fix the systems? Reboot? Hardware replacement? > >> > >> On Wed, 16 Apr 2008, Gerry Creager wrote: > >> > >>> We've had two fail rather randomly. The failures did cause disk > >>> corruption but it wasn't an undetected/undetectable sort. They > started > >>> throwing errors to syslog, then fell over and stopped accessing > disks. > >>> > >>> gerry > >>> > >>> Bruce Allen wrote: > >>>> Hi Gerry, > >>>> > >>>> So far the only problem we have had is with one Areca card that > had a bad > >>>> 2GB memory module. This generated lots of (correctable) single > bit > >>>> errors but eventually caused real problems. Could you say > something > >>>> about the reliability issues you have seen? > >>>> > >>>> Cheers, > >>>> Bruce > >>>> > >>>> > >>>> On Wed, 16 Apr 2008, Gerry Creager wrote: > >>>> > >>>>> We've used AoE (CoRAID hardware) with pretty good success (modulo > one > >>>>> RAID shelf fire that was caused by a manufacturing defect and > dealt with > >>>>> promptly by CoRAID). We've had some reliability issues with > Areca cards > >>>>> but no data corruption on the systems we've built that way. > >>>>> > >>>>> gerry > >>>>> > >>>>> Bruce Allen wrote: > >>>>>> Hi Xavier, > >>>>>> > >>>>>>>>>> PPS: We've also been doing some experiments with putting > >>>>>>>>>> OpenSolaris+ZFS on some of our generic (Supermicro + Areca) > 16-disk > >>>>>>>>>> RAID systems, which were originally intended to run Linux. > >>>>>> > >>>>>>>>> I think that DESY proved some data corruption with such > >>>>>>>>> configuration, so they switched to OpenSolaris+ZFS. > >>>>>> > >>>>>>>> I'm confused. I am also talking about OpenSolaris+ZFS. What > did > >>>>>>>> DESY try, and what did they switch to? > >>>>>> > >>>>>>> Sorry, I am indeed not clear. As far as I know, DESY found data > >>>>>>> corruption using Linux and Areca cards. They moved from linux > to > >>>>>>> OpenSolaris and ZFS, avoiding other corruption. This has been > >>>>>>> discussed in HEPiX storage workgroup. However, I can not speak > on > >>>>>>> their behalf at all. I'll try to get you in touch with someone > more > >>>>>>> aware of this issue, as my statements lack of figures. > >>>>>> > >>>>>> I think that would be very interesting to the entire Beowulf > mailing > >>>>>> list, so please suggest that they respond to the entire group, > not just > >>>>>> to me personally. Here is an LKML thread about silent data > corruption: > >>>>>> http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/linux-kernel/2007/9/10/191697 > >>>>>> > >>>>>> So far we have not seen any signs of data corruption on > Linux+Areca > >>>>>> systems (and our data files carry both internal and external > checksums, > >>>>>> so we would be sensitive to this). > >>>>>> > >>>>>> Cheers, > >>>>>> Bruce > >>>>>> _______________________________________________ > >>>>>> Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org > >>>>>> To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit > >>>>>> http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf > >>>>> > >>>>> > >>> > >>> > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org > To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit > http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
