Large Storage 8tb SATA Controller

[Hawkeyes]

Looking at the Marvell CGS-6081-8x. Its an 8-port card, but no data as to whether or not it will support 8 x 1tb drives. Saves a slot but may be at expense of performance? Would 2 4-port controllers be better?

Dont really need RAID, but may have to purchase a higher end card & use JBOD function?

Looking for your help and expertise.

Thanks,
Hawk

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Are you going to be putting all of the drives together in a single volume? Or will you be using them all separately?

If you are going to be using them separately, then there isn't much of a concern. It supports 48-bit LBA (larger than 137gb hard drives), and since you aren't doing RAID, you don't have to worry about volumes greater than 2TB. I don't see anywhere that it supports volumes greater than 2TB, so if you are planning to create multi-disk volumes (JBOD, etc), then that card might have issues, and I wouldn't risk it.

 

[Kakumba]

how much performance do you need? You could use software RAID, which means you can get a lower end controller, as all you are getting it for is the ports really. But depends on your needs. are you able to tell us more about what your requirements are?

 

[tw1164]

I can't tell who makes the particular card you're asking about, but I was able to find some other things.
That card uses the same chip as the sun x4500 servers do. I found a post about someone w/ a server that has 48TB of storage (48x1). He had a 2TB partition and a 5TB partition.

 

[Hawkeyes]

I will be using them all separately. The card is made by Marvell & about all I could get from Tech Support is that I need a true 64 bit PCIx slot to run it.

UPDATE May 12
The card is a PCI-X card (for server-style PCI X slots). My board has PCI slots plus PCI-EXpress slots. I should know better, but confused PCI-EXpress with PCI-X.

Even more confounding was the manufacturer statement that the card is compatable with PCI. Anyway, when I looked at it, it was obvious none of the slots on MY board matched the cards configuration.

But what the hey...I slammed it into an unused PCI slot with half the card's contacts hanging over the edge & gave it a whirl. Attached 8 SATA cables, crossed my fingers and let 'er boot!

Boot sequence recognized the card, but gave an error "no FSI 34 on channel 1, ignoring". I thought I'd have a problem, but all 8 drives were ther & it works fine.

I thought it was a pretty good solution - paid $99 (on sale) for it.

Thanks,
Hawk

 

[Kakumba]

Well, as long as it works, thats great, but you are definitely not going to get the full performance of that card. Hope its everything you are looking for.

 

[mooseracing]

Originally posted by: Hawkeyes
Even more confounding was the manufacturer statement that the card is compatable with PCI. Anyway, when I looked at it, it was obvious none of the slots on MY board matched the cards configuration.

But what the hey...I slammed it into an unused PCI slot with half the card's contacts hanging over the edge & gave it a whirl.

Thats how PCIx cards look in a PCI slot. I have a GB nic in a server the same way, you just won't get as good as performance as others have stated. Since the overhanging part of the card isn't connecting to the bus.