best budget SCSI raid-1 controller?

[jasonjm]

heya all.... wondering if anyone has any ideas on which SCSI raid controller is the best value?

obviously has to be very stable, will be use for 2 x 15k cheetah drives in raid 1 on a win2k server.....

I would also consider on-motherboard solutions (for pentium 4s)

thanks all!

 

[sean2002]

I don't think the words budget and SCSI raid belong in the same sentence

 

[dkozloski]

I bought a Mylex Acceleraid 150 U2W controller and two 18gig Seagate Cheetah U2W 10k RPM drives for a total of $300 a few weeks ago and they work just fine. The key to affordable SCSI RAID systems is to stay away from the bleeding edge of technology. There is very little risk in using refurbs, take-outs, used and the like because the infant mortality stuff has been weeded out. I have been scouring the used/surplus market and assembling systems for years and have yet to have a failure. Be careful in trying to use controllers that don't have support for the newer operating systems. A good example is the Buslogic(Mylex) BT-950. The raid performance in Win98SE is brilliant but there are no, and never will be any, drivers for Win2000 or WinXP. There are a lot of good controllers and drives out there that hit the market after the bankruptcy of a whole mob of technology companies. Controllers that cost thousands new just a short while ago are selling for hundreds and even less by the junk dealers. Do your research and I can guarantee that you won't be disappointed.

 

[Wolfsraider]

define budget?

here is an exerpt from the man at www.2cpu.com forums (he (upaboveit)wrote the scsi raid faq there)

If I were to go with ultra160 raid, what controllers would you recommend? I?ve been looking real hard at the Adaptec 3210s
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Well, retail Adaptec wouldn't be on my recommended list. LSI make nice controllers. Shoarthing runs ICP-Vortex. I'm currently running a few Mylex controllers (though have run other brands). Overclocked-P4 runs a Compaq 5304 (special OEM Adaptec). If 64/66 is critical then your current retail choices are pretty much Adaptec, LSI or ICP-Vortex. Plus, there's more to the RAID controller than simple transfer rate. It's how easy it is to manage and manipulate. How good its management software is. How good the XOR engine is. What extra features it has.
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How much cache would you stick on it?
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I run 128MB on mine. I don't think I really need more than 64MB and even then it's debatable. You'll find more use in a server environment and redundant RAID levels by having a beefy cache than in a simple RAID 0 setup.
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I work with huge image files, anywhere from 25mb on up to 200+mb and AVI / NSF or Mpeg animation & video files that are off the charts?
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That's not really big. Look at Jason Dickey's work. He has .psd files around the GB mark. Hooz works with multi GB video files. Even a basic 32/33 SCSI RAID setup is enough for them. In fact, Hooz says he only needs plain ol' SCSI. Not even RAID.
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It?s the constant opening, editing, saving?? and??.waiting.
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Well, any current SCSI RAID will solve that.
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I?m just looking for the most responsive system I can get.
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Again, a SCSI subsystem will do that for you. From the sounds of things you don't have a need for 64/66 so you might as well consider 64/33 as a viable option.


from
www.2cpu.com

i recommend them as they have a great number of users that use scsi raid so would be better equiped to answer driver problems,products to look into,operating systems that are supported,etc...

hope this helps
mike

 

[Zepper]

There are also software Raid 1 for SCSI solutions out there--possibly for free. Actually that should be a very simple implementation considering the smarts SCSI already has built-in.

.bh.

 

[SCSIRAID]

LSI's new 1030 U320 chip has RAID 1 capability built in. LSI calls it Imbedded Mirroring (IM). It's HW RAID in that the intelligence is in the chip firmware and not in the device driver. Not sure if they are shipping it generally yet. Its being used in the new IBM xSeries servers (which are shipping now).