[lug] RAID Controller Recommendations

[Zan Lynx]

On 09/18/2014 04:17 PM, George Sexton wrote:
> I'm looking for some recommendations for RAID controllers. I've been
> using 3Ware 9xxx devices, but with SSD's, the write performance is
> beyond terrible. I'm looking for a "real" RAID card, with hot swap. I
> only need support for 4 devices, and ideally I'd like to buy it used
> on EBay, cheap.

I know you wanted a real RAID card, but my recommendation would be
Intel's built-in motherboard SATA controller.
 
For hot swap, the directions here should work for any Linux machine:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/28600/ahci-hotswap-in-lucid-server

RAID 1, 0, 10 are super easy to do in software. So is RAID 5. I'd use
btrfs these days though just because I really like it. It does its own
RAID-like thing. Btrfs also uses TRIM which a lot of RAID systems won't
support.

I did some quick Google searching and I can now tell you about several
$1,000+ cards from Adaptec and LSI that do 12 Gbps SAS with huge cache
and a BBU. However, that's probably not what you want.

I found a review of a RocketRAID which makes it sound pretty good. The
name makes me think of not very good cheap junk, but that was a long
time ago.

http://www.thessdreview.com/our-reviews/highpoint-2720sgl-rocketraid-controller-review-amazing-3gbs-recorded-with-8-crucial-c400-ssds/

The older you go on used cards the slower the cards get and the less
optimized for SSD they are.

I used to read web forums with people who liked Areca SATA RAID.

The last RAID card I used was a LSI something with four SCSI U320 15k
drives.