Advice on choosing a RAID card

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perdrix

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Mar 3, 2016
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I've got a Zotac NM10 mobo fitted with an Intel Atom 525, 4GB Ram with Ubuntu 14.04.4 Trusty Tahr.

I'm looking for a SAS/SATA RAID card PCIe half length with ports for 8 internal drives.

If a SAS external port on a RAID will also support a SAS LTO Tape drive then I'm also loooking for an external port on the card.

Support for 4TB and larger drives required.

There's so many out there I'm getting overwhelmed.

Cheap is good too :)

Thanks lots in advance
Dave
 

perdrix

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Mar 3, 2016
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I've ordered an Adaptec ASR-51245 which has 12 internal (3*SFF-8087) and 4 external ports (1*SFF-8088).

To get support for >2TB disks I found a card with revision level TCA-00296-08-C which MicroSemi (Adaptec) say *will* support >2TB disks. YOY they don't publish all the TCA numbers that will work is beyond me ... instead :

Support for SATA and SAS disk drives with a size of 2TB or greater

just says:

"* Adaptec RAID 51245, 51645, and 52445: Board Rev. C1 or later is needed. Previous board revisions may or may not recognize greater than 2TB disk drives."

Here's hoping it will work ...

Dave
 

Patrick

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Dec 21, 2010
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Do you need RAID? I have switched almost entirely to software pairty and replication.
 
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Stereodude

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Feb 21, 2016
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Couldn't you have used something like a Dell PERC H700 or similar LSI based RAID card + a SAS expander? Or did you need it all on one PCIe card?
 

perdrix

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Mar 3, 2016
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To answer both Patrick and Stereodude.

Yes I need a raid card. An Intel Atom 525 with 4GB RAM is not up for running FreeNAS ZFS. So I'm running Ubuntu LTS 14.04.4 (Trusty Tahr) with a RAID.

I need it all on one PCIe card more's the pity. I paid USD63 including USD10 shipping on eBay for the card (item number 172101278792). I found it searching on ebay.com, but once you know the item number eBay UK will show it. The vendor has 99 remaining.

Now all I need is to work out how to wire up a battery to back the ram (not paying Adaptec prices for an AMB-800T).

Cheers
Dave
 

Stereodude

Active Member
Feb 21, 2016
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Now all I need is to work out how to wire up a battery to back the ram (not paying Adaptec prices for an AMB-800T).
You're probably going to have to if the Adaptec cards are like all the LSI based cards. The battery talks to the card over I2C or SPI and can cause you all sorts of headaches.

In the case of the Dell PERC cards I played with even opening a failed battery pack and replacing just the failed Li-ion cell with another good Li-ion cell wasn't enough to make a bad battery pack work again because the circuitry in the battery pack that talks to the card already decided it was bad.
 

perdrix

Member
Mar 3, 2016
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You're probably going to have to if the Adaptec cards are like all the LSI based cards. The battery talks to the card over I2C or SPI and can cause you all sorts of headaches.
Oh drats! That's a bother. Does anyone know the dirt on these Adaptec cards and backup batteries.

Cheers
Dave