I am getting the final touches done on my server.

 

I am using an ASUS P7H55D-M evo motherboard, and have also ordered a Adaptec 1430SA. On board I have (according to the manual) 6 ports from the H55 express chipset and an ESATA from a Marvell 88SE6111 chip. The HCL (@wiki) didn't say anything about the Marvell chip. Is it known working? Performance compared to my options? How can I test the performance of my controllers before launching my server? Does Preclear give any indication of the performance? Can I just launch a preclear at the same time on each of the controllers and see which one is the fastest? Or is there a better way to find out? Does anyone know from experience?

 

/Lars Olof

First of all, I'm confused as to why you would choose the Adaptec card when the Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 offers double the ports for only slightly more money (as it also requires special cables).

 

I don't know if the Marvell chipset is supported or not, you'll just have to try it out and see.  If it isn't, then email LimeTech with information about it and they may add drivers for it to subsequent releases of unRAID.

 

As for performance, I believe that the best way to test it is to perform real-world tests by just transferring some files back and forth.  Obviously don't trust it with your data until you are absolutely sure that it is reliable and that it isn't doing something nasty such as silently corrupting data during transfers.  Use TeraCopy to run CRC checks and/or run MD5 checks to be sure.

 

If you really want to put your server to the test, transfer some files during a parity check or rebuild from parity.  This will cause the server to deal with the transfer while all of its disks are already busy.

First of all Rajahal, the US is not the world :-)

Does Newegg.com ship internationally?

Newegg.com does not currently ship internationally; we only deliver to locations within the United States and to Puerto Rico.

Supermicro products may be common in US, but they are not easy to find here in Sweden.

 

I was kind of looking for a way to test disk performance without relying on factors like source disk, network and the likes. Just to give me a general indication of the speeds of my different adapters and disks. Well, I got my 1430 now, and I'll just hook up two empty disks to that and the onboard and see what happens with a preclear. I'll be back... (in about 24 hours)

 

/Lars Olof

 

First of all Rajahal, the US is not the world :-)

[sarcasm]Wait, what since when did this occur!! My history teacher has been wrong all this time [/sarcasm]

 

Supermicro products may be common in US, but they are not easy to find here in Sweden.

That may be true, Rajahal was just giving a link to a card that he feels is better... and I agree.  If you could find that card then it is the one that you want.

Ok, the results are in.

 

Preclearing three disks of same model on three controllers, The onboard Intel, the Adaptec 1430 and onboard ESATA Marvell. Don't yet know what disk is on what controller. 

 

It looks like SDA took 24 hours 10 mins, SDC 24 hours 50 mins and SDB 28 hours 10 minutes. Now all I have to do is figure out what disk is connected to what controller. Is there any commands for digging into that, or will I have to dig into the syslog boot data? Anyhow, one of the disks took four hours longer. I'll see if that is the ESATA Marvell controller, and in that case won't do anything about it. (It might be the ESATA to SATA cradle I use too, don't some of them have some bridge chips that might slow everything down?) I'll just use it for copying to and from the server anyway. If the slow one is one of my main controllers, I'll be a bit more concerned.

 

 

/Lars Olof