Hi Guys,

 

im very impressed with your software. So ill build a NAS with it.

 

I was thinking of using this controller:

 

http://www.exsys.ch/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=36_39&products_id=702

 

(non-raid, 8 ports, sil3132-chipset)

 

Is anyone using this controller? Its under 100 EUR, so quite cheap.

If noone is using it, the sil3132 should work, shouldnt it?

 

thanks for your help

It should work, but the speed of 8 drives on the PCIe x1 lane will not be great at all.  It would be fine for accessing 3-4 drives at the same time, but any more than that and speed will suffer.  This should not be a huge deal, except during a parity check.

 

A better solution, if you have an available PCIe x4 or greater slot is the Supermicro SASLP SATA card.  This card works in a PCIe x4 slot or greater and will allow for 8 drives to be connected using special SAS cables. 

 

Do some searching in the forum for the card and info related to it.

thanks prostuff1!

 

that card is indeed much better and only a couple of euros more, but not that easy to come by in germany.

 

i will also be using an 8 port pci-x card (in a 32bit PCI Slot) so im curious: Shouldnt the parity check be made on the fly when writing a file to the array (if im not using a cache drive)?

 

so would the write speed via gigabit-lan be increased if i use a pci-express 4x controller instead of the pci-x controller in the standard pci-slot?

 

parity is indeed calculated on the fly when adding data to the server.

 

Many of us do a monthly parity check to make sure that all drives are working well and nothing is acting up.

 

With 8 drives already on the PCI bus you are going to have slow parity check and rebuild times already.  If you add a drive or a drive fails and you have to rebuild it will take longer to do so because of the PCI bus.

Here's a lot of information on PCI-X and PCI-Express and PCI buses: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=7520.0 and also http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=7526.msg72896#msg72896

 

The limitation is beyond just parity checks. The limit occurs in the following situations, during parity builds, parity checks, failed drive situation, drive rebuilds, simultaneous writes, and simultaneous reads.