Hardware RAID 1 Addon Products

[WeeboTech]

I thought these may be interesting products for people who want to add hardware raid1 to their system (Cache drive? OS?)

It uses the SIL 4723 chip

 

http://www.cooldrives.com/insaiira1mic.html

http://www.cooldrives.com/inbaymosaiir.html

 

 

What I was really looking for was a SIL 5723 and/or 5744.. Still these may have use for others.

I have tested the SIL5744 with a SIL31-32 and JMB 363 and it worked.

Just looking for a PCI card or BAY mount that will do the same thing.

 

An interesting thing to note is some of the newer motherboards are coming embedded with these chipsets.

This will allow you to do RAID1,0 or matrix raid without software drivers.

To the OS it only knows about the drive, does not know what is going on underneath.

These most likely will be supported by unRAID because of the driving chipset support.

I.E. Marvel, JMB, SIL or Intel chip that front ends the SIL 5723/5744 chips.

 

 

Interesting road map I discovered. (although a bit dated)

 

[RobJ]

Impressive!  Good video.  No mention whether you have direct access to the individual drives with tools like hdparm or smartctl, for spindown or individual SMART reports/testing.

[WeeboTech]

If you are doing any form of raid you do not have access to the individual drives.

If you are doing JBOD as with the SIL5744 you have access to the individual drives.

[NLS]

Where is the roadmap?

 

I didn't realize how this was interesting, until I understood that you in fact "hide" behind your on board SATA. Definitely interesting.

 

I think they sell it very expensively though.

 

 

[WeeboTech]

Where is the roadmap?

I included the image into the message instead of using an external link

[Slimer]

WeeboTech

 

Did you ever find a solution to this problem?

[WeeboTech]

I have used the Silicon Image Steelvine processor with adequate results.

 

I have not used this exact product, but I expect this to work fine with RAID1.

http://www.addonics.com/products/host_controller/ad2sahpmeu.asp

 

What I eventually settled on was a used Areca ARC-1200.

This is a great caching raid controller.

 

What I did was set up a 2 drive array with two 1.5TB 7200RPM Drives.

Then carved out separate RAID volumes from the two drives.

1 Volume is a 2TB RAID0 array which I use for parity.

1 Volume is a 350gb RAID1 array which I use for cache.

 

It works out well and provides up to 43MB/s write speed to a parity protected drive due to the RAID0 speedup along with cache.

 

Keep in mind the cache can cause problems by having stagnant data not written out if you crash from a sudden loss of power. Use of a UPS is of paramount importance.

 

I'm very happy with the SAFE array setup.

[WeeboTech]

dd writeread tests using ARC1200

http://code.google.com/p/unraid-weebotech/downloads/detail?name=writeread10gb

 

Write RAID1 Seagate 1.5TB 7200RPM

10240000000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 167.327 s, 61.2 MB/s

 

Read RAID1 Seagate 1.5TB 7200RPM

10240000000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 119.769 s, 85.5 MB/s

 

Write Seagate 1.5TB 7200RPM  RAID0 Parity & WD EADS 2TB 5400 RPM Protected FilesSystem. 50% full.

10240000000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 248.384 s, 41.2 MB/s

10240000000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 92.2786 s, 111 MB/s  READ

 

Write Seagate 1.5TB 7200RPM  RAID0 Parity & Seagate 1.5TB 5400RPM  Protected FilesSystem.  diskModel.3=ST31500541AS

10240000000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 285.186 s, 36.0 MB/s

10240000000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 93.9827 s, 109 MB/s READ

 

Write Seagate 1.5TB 7200RPM  RAID0 Parity & Seagate 1.5TB 7200RPM  Protected FilesSystem.  diskModel.4=ST31500341AS

10240000000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 235.849 s, 43.4 MB/s

10240000000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 78.2735 s, 131 MB/s READ