[Leaplist] The state of 3Ware/AMCC/LSI and Areca/ATTO hardware RAID -- WAS: New machine build ....

[Bryan J. Smith]

Kevin Korb <kmk at sanitarium.net> wrote:
> Yes, performance is about the same now that 3Ware has
> caught up.  That is also why the price tags are about
> the same.

In general, the prices are always going to be a couple hundred
bucks to high 3 figures, depending on the ports.

> 3Ware does do a good job of supporting Linux.
> Areca does a good job of supporting Linux.
> Acreca also supports BSD and OpenSolaris while 3Ware
> couldn't give a crap.

I think we might see that change with LSI Logic, but I'm
not sure all of the changes will be for the best (e.g.,
MPT Fusion).

> Areca even makes an OS independent management interface
> that allows you to manage their controllers even if you
> run an OS obscure enough for them to not support it.

Yep.  They've always done that on the high-port count
cards.

Again, as I mentioned, there's just a lot of convergence
in the entire FC and SAS industries, and probably iSCSI
more and more as well.

Microcontroller core + ASICs + serial PHYs with SCSI-2
firmware and support logic = FC or SAS or iSCSI.  The
only difference is the lower layers (PHYs, network
addressing and transport blocking).


-- 
Bryan J Smith          Professional, Technical Annoyance
b.j.smith at ieee.org    http://www.linkedin.com/in/bjsmith
--------------------------------------------------------
I don't have a "favorite Linux distro."  I use, develop
and support community efforts, often built around Linux.
Technology and solutions are my focus, not dragging in
assumptions, marketing and other concepts which dominate
non-community developed software, which I left long ago.


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