Alex wrote:
> Without starting too much controvesy I hope, I would seriously
> recommend you evaluate the AMCC Escalade 9500S SATA controller. It
> has many of the features of a SCSI controler, but works with cheaper
> drives, and for half the price or many SCSI controlers (9500S-8MI goes
> for abour $500). See http://plexq.com/~aturner/3ware.pdf for their 4
> way, 8 way and 12 way RAID benchmarks including RAID 0, RAID 5 and
> RAID 10. If others have similar data, I would be very interested to
> see how it stacks up against other RAID controllers.
At the risk of shaming myself with another 'me too' post, I'd like to
say that my experiences back this up 100%. The Escalade controllers are
excellent and the Raptor drives are fast and reliable (so far). With
the money saved from going SCSI, instead of a RAID 5 a 10 could be built
for roughly the same price and capacity, guess which array is going to
be faster?
I think the danger about SATA is that many SATA components are not
server quality, so you have to be more careful about what you buy. For
example, you can't just assume your SATA backplane has hot swap lights
(got bit by this one myself, heh).
Merlin