I have just managed to pick up a P812 1GB FBWC for US$350 and should it turn out to be the expected item when it arrives then I will do an overview and write-up here. If it turns out not to be as expected then this thread is likely to be very short .
Ok, so just some quick details on the P812 (HP Part number: 487204-B21).
Chipset: PMC-Sierra SRC 8x6G SAS RAID-on-chip + PMC-Sierra SXP 36x3GSec 6 Gb/s SAS Expander
Ports: 4x External (SFF-8088) & 2x Internal (SFF-8087) (24 channels total)
Cache: 1GB 800MHz DDRII FBWC (as standard)
Raid levels supported: RAID 0, 1, 1+0, 5, 6, 50, and 60 (As standard)
Host Interface: PCI Express 2.0 8x
Specs from HP available here.
Note that some people are advertising this controller with the HP part number 587224-001. This is a spare part for the main board for this controller and is not the full controller.
Apart from the price tag, I also bough this controller due to its 1GB FBWC (no need for BBU replacements) and as it is fully supported in VMware vSphere (ESXi) 5.1 and below (well 5.x, 4.x)
Current pricing ranges from US$551 -> US$1,000+ on Amazon and US$580 -> US$1,000+ on EBay. The US$350 (seller advertised on EBay and Amazon) seems like a steal and even if the 1GB FBWC is missing then it would still end up at around US$600 if I had to buy a new 1GB FBWC module which still is not bad for a 24 link SAS controller with that much FBWC.
There is an interesting article on tuning a P400 (previous gen) array here.
I have not found a lot of benchmarks or articles on the P812 but I suspect that this is mainly due to the high price tag.
RB
Ok, so just some quick details on the P812 (HP Part number: 487204-B21).
Chipset: PMC-Sierra SRC 8x6G SAS RAID-on-chip + PMC-Sierra SXP 36x3GSec 6 Gb/s SAS Expander
Ports: 4x External (SFF-8088) & 2x Internal (SFF-8087) (24 channels total)
Cache: 1GB 800MHz DDRII FBWC (as standard)
Raid levels supported: RAID 0, 1, 1+0, 5, 6, 50, and 60 (As standard)
Host Interface: PCI Express 2.0 8x
Specs from HP available here.
Note that some people are advertising this controller with the HP part number 587224-001. This is a spare part for the main board for this controller and is not the full controller.
Apart from the price tag, I also bough this controller due to its 1GB FBWC (no need for BBU replacements) and as it is fully supported in VMware vSphere (ESXi) 5.1 and below (well 5.x, 4.x)
Current pricing ranges from US$551 -> US$1,000+ on Amazon and US$580 -> US$1,000+ on EBay. The US$350 (seller advertised on EBay and Amazon) seems like a steal and even if the 1GB FBWC is missing then it would still end up at around US$600 if I had to buy a new 1GB FBWC module which still is not bad for a 24 link SAS controller with that much FBWC.
There is an interesting article on tuning a P400 (previous gen) array here.
I have not found a lot of benchmarks or articles on the P812 but I suspect that this is mainly due to the high price tag.
RB