Dell/LSI RAID controllers

[Daniel Braniss]

> Hello all,
> 
> I'm considering a Dell, specifically the Poweredge 2970, and I'm not 
> finding much info on their site about the various raid controller options 
> - there don't seem to be any actual specs.
> 
> Anyone here familiar with the various models (PERC 5i, PERC 6I, SAS 6/iR) 
> and what FBSD driver each one uses?  All are within my price range.  I 
> assume all can handle SATA as well as SAS, correct?  Is performance in the 
> ballpark of a $500 3Ware or Areca card?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Charles

We have a couple of them, no complains. The raid is doing fine, though
megacli is too primitive. We are running raid 5 and zfs on top and
the throughput is comparable to our NetAPP filer (without all the bells
and whistles).

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FreeBSD 7.2-STABLE #33: Thu Jul  2 16:11:01 IDT 2009
    danny at sunfire:/r+d/obj/sunfire/r+d/7/sys/HUJI
module_register: module pci/igb already exists!
Module pci/igb failed to register: 17
Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0
CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU           E5410  @ 2.33GHz (2329.84-MHz K8-class CPU)
  Origin = "GenuineIntel"  Id = 0x10676  Stepping = 6
  Features=0xbfebfbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,
CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CLFLUSH,DTS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE>
  Features2=0xce3bd<SSE3,DTES64,MON,DS_CPL,VMX,EST,TM2,SSSE3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,DCA
,SSE4.1>
  AMD Features=0x20100800<SYSCALL,NX,LM>
  AMD Features2=0x1<LAHF>
  TSC: P-state invariant
  Cores per package: 4
usable memory = 8568651776 (8171 MB)
avail memory  = 8267067392 (7884 MB)
ACPI APIC Table: <DELL   PE_SC3  >
FreeBSD/SMP: Multiprocessor System Detected: 4 CPUs
...
mfi0: <Dell PERC 6> port 0xec00-0xecff mem 0xfc980000-0xfc9bffff,0xfc940000-0xf
c97ffff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci1
mfi0: Megaraid SAS driver Ver 3.00 
mfi0: [ITHREAD]
pcib8: <ACPI PCI-PCI bridge> at device 4.0 on pci0
pci10: <ACPI PCI bus> on pcib8
mfi1: <Dell PERC 6> port 0xdc00-0xdcff mem 0xfc780000-0xfc7bffff,0xfc740000-0xf
c77ffff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci10
mfi1: Megaraid SAS driver Ver 3.00 
...

danny