On 7/9/2013 9:45 PM, David Christensen wrote: > On 07/09/13 07:21, Stan Hoeppner wrote: >> x1, x4, or x8 slot width? > > x1 or x4. > >> Price range? > > Under $50 per SATA3 port, including cables, whatever. > >> Expected performance level? > > Comparable to current/ recent Intel desktop chipsets/ motherboards. > >> Workstation or dedicated server? > > Workstation.
LSI HBAs are acknowledged as the most Linux compatible/friendly and highest performance HBAs/RAID cards available. The 9211-4i is the least expensive HBA in their lineup, a PCIe 2.0 x4 card w/4 ports. It is capable of full 4GB/s PCIe 2.0 x4 duplex throughput with sufficient drives/SSDs attached, much higher performance than Intel Southbridge SATA controllers. It does also offer hardware RAID 0/1/1E/10 if you choose to use it. This is not fakeraid but the same firmware RAID on LSI's RAID cards. You can boot the OS directly from an array as with any RAID card. However due to lack of write cache DRAM it is much slower than their full up RAID cards, but on par with the performance of Linux md RAID 0/1/10 at low spinning drive counts (2-8). The RAID function is not suitable for use with SSDs as the ASIC is simply too slow for the high IO rates. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118114 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132042 $192, $48/port, w/breakout cable for 4 drives. Ya can't go wrong with LSI. -- Stan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/51ddf678.3080...@hardwarefreak.com