new server motherboard with SATA II

[Fraser Tweedale]

On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 03:11:56PM +1000, Danny Carroll wrote:
> Jeremy, thanks for your response.
> 
> Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
> > SATA150 and SATA300 both work just fine on FreeBSD, but its dependent
> > upon what chipset you go with.  I would strongly recommend you go with a
> > board/system that uses Intel's ICH7, 8, or 9 southbridge.  I have
> > extensive experience using these in production environments, and they
> > are very reliable, plus fast.  FreeBSD works quite well with them.
> 
> I do have a board with an ICH10 chipset but the SATA drives are detected 
> as UDMA-33.
> 
> I guess the ICH* chipsets would not support AMD64, being an intel chip.
> 
Intel chips support AMD64 - the architecture is called that because AMD
came up with it first.  Intel calls their implementation EM64T (and
x86-64 refers to the same thing), but it is all AMD64.

As for the issue with those drives being detected as UDMA-33, I'm not
sure, and defer my response.
> > Second, I wouldn't bother considering using Intel MatrixRAID (which all
> > of the above chipsets support) for any sort of failover for your root/OS
> > disk, in case you're tempted to try it.  FreeBSD has bugs pertaining to
> > such support (see below Wiki URL for some examples).
> 
> Yeah, I'm not so keen of the modern trend to have on-board raid.  I'd 
> rather keep it simple and let FreeBSD handle it.  Root disk will not be 
> raid at all.
> 
> > Third, I cannot recommend nVidia chipsets, because there have been
> > numerous reports recently and in the past where the SATA disks are being
> > detected as UDMA33.  I believe there are some ATI/AMD chipsets which are
> > doing the same.  There is a rumour that the operational speed of the
> > disks is still SATA150/300, and just that FreeBSD is labelling the
> > negotiated speed wrong, but my recommendation is not to risk it.
> 
> Hmmm, some people say nforce4 chipsets are cool, some not...  It's hard 
> to know which way to go.
> 
For the record, I concur with Jeremy's sentiments.  I also had issues
with SATA on nForce 520, which prompted a shift to Intel for my main
system.
> > Fourth, because you'll likely have multiple disks in a ZFS zpool, you
> > should probably be aware of the problem that haunts some users from time
> > to time (re: DMA errors).
> 
> I've seen it on old ATA hardware.
> 
> > http://wiki.freebsd.org/JeremyChadwick/ATA_issues_and_troubleshooting
> > 
> >> I'd be willing to go with intel arch although from a ZFS perspective it  
> >> sounds like AMD64 is better.
> > 
> > There was a recent discussion on developers@ (which is private) about
> > some topics, which eventually lead into a discussion about ZFS, tuning,
> > and a 2GB kmem limit in FreeBSD (which affects amd64 too).  I can't copy
> > the conversation/thread because developers@ has a strict "do not
> > disclose" policy.
> 
> I thought that the 2gb limit was less of a problem for AMD64 because of 
> the addressing used.
> 
> > Just be aware you ***will*** need to tune ZFS on FreeBSD to make it
> > as reliable as possible.
> 
> We'll like I said, I'd be willing to jump on a list and provide info etc 
> about my setup.  I plan to have it running on a test bench with lots of 
> IO for a week or so before I start using it.  Even then the data will 
> not be critical so if it breaks then I can rebuild without hassle. 
> System disk will be UFS2 to keep it simple...
> 
> I've got it running on desktop hardware (ASUS P5Q board with ICH5) while 
> I wait for a decision on a permanent Motherboard.  With this setup I see 
> about 60mb write speeds on ZFS across 5 disks.  I've done the basic 
> tuning suggested in the Wiki.  One thing I notice is that the CPU is 
> used for 30% on Interrupts.  It was firewire first, so I disabled it in 
> the BIOS, then it went to UHCI so I disabled all USB ports.  Now it is 
> on the ATA controller.  All of this was on the same interrupt (19).
> 
> I'm thinking of getting a couple of Promise SATA-300 TX4 IO cards 
> (non-raid).  Perhaps that will offload the CPU.
> 
> -D

frase
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