Comment 3Ware 7500 on Linux experiences (Score 2, Informative) 597
At our business we use the 3Ware 7500 with a 3x 120GB (1200JB) Western Digital RAID5 configuration on Linux RedHat 7.2. The machine is a dual P3/1GHz on a SuperMicro 370DER motherboard. We use the machine as our primary file server/compilation box, so data integrity and fast failure resolution is critical.
The cited benchmark page has excellent information (130 graphs!), and it confirms my first hand experiences of everyday use of the 3Ware 7500. The read times in RAID5 are outstanding, but there are sometimes significant delays on file creation. In addition, it seems that IO is single piped, or serialized on writes at times.
Since the 3Ware 7500 is based on an FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array, (see http://www.xilinx.com/), with LOTS of extra ECC processing power, the problem with writes is not likely to be related to the "CPU", but rather part of the internal IO structure of the card. I hope it is amenable to correction with a microcode upgrade to the FPGA, but it may be related to the memory architecture of the card.
Overall, I'm pretty happy with the controller, especially the ease of installation and rebuild time. I have high confidence in the data integrity, and the price is good. I also recommend the drive cage that 3Ware sells, even though it is expensive at $200, it's well worth it because it fits 3 drives in the space of 2 5 1/4 inch bays, and it is hot swap proven.
I'd like to see a shoot-out between the 3Ware and some SCSI/Fibre Channel RAID 5 configurations!!!
Comments?
The cited benchmark page has excellent information (130 graphs!), and it confirms my first hand experiences of everyday use of the 3Ware 7500. The read times in RAID5 are outstanding, but there are sometimes significant delays on file creation. In addition, it seems that IO is single piped, or serialized on writes at times.
Since the 3Ware 7500 is based on an FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array, (see http://www.xilinx.com/), with LOTS of extra ECC processing power, the problem with writes is not likely to be related to the "CPU", but rather part of the internal IO structure of the card. I hope it is amenable to correction with a microcode upgrade to the FPGA, but it may be related to the memory architecture of the card.
Overall, I'm pretty happy with the controller, especially the ease of installation and rebuild time. I have high confidence in the data integrity, and the price is good. I also recommend the drive cage that 3Ware sells, even though it is expensive at $200, it's well worth it because it fits 3 drives in the space of 2 5 1/4 inch bays, and it is hot swap proven.
I'd like to see a shoot-out between the 3Ware and some SCSI/Fibre Channel RAID 5 configurations!!!
Comments?
