On Jan 21, 2006, at 8:09 AM, Sander Steffann wrote:
> Dell has used (and rebranded) Adaptec and LSI controllers for their
> PERC series, and I agree that the Adaptec controllers perform
> badly. As far as I know the LSI based controllers are quite good
> (and some come with 256MB battery backed cache, which is nice :-)
Over the last 5 years I've had a *LOT* of Dell equipment, most of
which has RAID. The adaptec-based ones are OK. Not great
performance, but very easy to manage.
The LSI based ones are pretty good, but the older ones were somehow
deficient in that the expected performance was never achieved.
However, the latest one I have is a PE 1850 with the PERC43/Si (LSI
based) which is surprisingly fast. It comes with battery + 256MB RAM
and just screams in RAID1 mode (only have two disks on this box).
I'd buy that server again anyday.
However, for my big DB server arrays, I always go with the LSI
branded cards and run them in RAID10 config.