New media storage server build

[miimura]

Originally Posted by notta3d

Mike, you said the 5000 series doesn't have any pcix8. What about the 2 boards I listed above? They have 2 each. Thanks.

5000X (workstation) boards use the 16 lanes on one x16 slot. 5000P (server) boards spread the 16 lanes to 2 x8 slots. 5000x boards typically do not have onboard video while 5000P boards do.

- Mike

[MikeSM]

Originally Posted by MikeSM

Ah that's right... I forgot about that. I know tejun is working on full FIS based switching with some newer JMB and ICH hardware which is supposed to support it. But you're right, only the 3124 does FIS based switching now...

I only use 3132's in my current setup with PMP's, but have done builds for others with AHCI as well. I'll have to benchmark them and see how they are doing...

BTW, it definitely looks like the new Intel ICH10 series southbridges which are slated to ship with the eaglelake series motherboards next quarter will fully support FIS based Port multipliers on the onboard AHCI SATA ports.

This should fix the performance bottlenecks that are people are seeing with non-3124 based HBA's and SATA port multipliers. The SI 3726 PMP supports FIS based operations, and is the most common PMP in use it seems.

So, if you are looking to build a big NAS with software RAID and with port multipliers, you might want to wait a bit and pick up a new model motherboard with the ICH10 in it.

[blackoper]

so I've been using Kubuntu 7.10 for a while now due to installing a linuxmce home automation system, but just don't like it as a server system. I'm going back to Fedora 8 as a server system to run mythtv/other server apps and the 2.6.24 kernel that was just released that has PMP support built in (yay!). I'll run linuxmce on another dedicated box and network link it to the server box's storage and whatnot.
Currently rocking 5x300GB, 5x500GB and a set of 2x 750GB raid0 WD drives
I really like the stability of the IBM DG965WH, it has 6 sata 2 ports, onboard intel video, 2 full size x16 slots and 2x1pcie along with 3 pci slots... it's great, it just doesn't overclock at all. Also with the intel 2160 chip in it, it gets 43 watts idle with no pci/pci-e cards in system and a 2.5" drive. 60ish watts when all drives are in idle except the raid0
I've updated my hardware profile and it now even has new pictures of things http://mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/User:Blackoper


Transfer speeds without using gigabit link aggregation through samba are 75MB a second with the raid 0 and 500gb raid 5, the mismatched drives of the 300x5 raid5 get around 49 to 50MB a second. Link aggregation jumps the transfer speeds up about 30% for the raid0 and 500gbx5 raid 5.

[Bokusf]

So Kapone,

I've been following this thread in spurts mostly and I have to say that it a very interesting read. I would like to know 2 things, first off do you have an updated parts list for your build? just for organization sake I think we would all like to know but don't really have the time to go back and read through the whole thread. Secondly, if you were to suggest a "beginners" card for someone who had big dreams but a small wallet, what would that be?

To be more specific: I have a 2 client setup (bedroom gaming pc and livingroom HTPC) where the HTPC is actually the server, housing 4 500GB HD's in a software raid5 array using the motherboards onboard controller. Now I wanted to get away from using the onboard controller and make the venture to a card for 2 reasons, 1) so that I'm not locked into this motherboard for the rest of my life and 2) because now with the intro of HDM I'm gonna need more space very soon.
So I was looking for a card that has at least 4 ports but can be expandable if i wanted to add more later. Also I don't want to spend 2 much for it maybe in the $100-300 range.

any ideas?
thanks in advance, and sry if i hijacked

- Bo -

[kapone]

I have changed quite a few things since I started with this project, but I'll try to summarize the parts.

Server:

- Tyan s5360 dual Xeon motherboard with two 3.2GHz Xeons - ~$500 (Mind you, this is way overkill, you don't "need" this kind of horsepower. Any decent motherboard with multiple PCI-X slots will do)
- 4GB RAM for the server - ~$200 (Again, this is 184 pin server grade DDR RAM, so kinda expensive)
- Server case - ~$80
- Sil 3124 cards - ~$70 (although I bought mine on fleabay, picked up five for $100 ). I have 4 in the server at this point.
- Power supply - had it lying around, but factor in ~$50
- DVD drive - had it lying around, but factor in ~$25
- O/S hard disk - had it lying around, but factor in ~$60
- Various cables - $20.

Total cost of the server = ~$900 without the host cards.

Total cost with 4 cards = $1,180 (new cards) or ~$1,000 if you shop fleabay.

Again, this is much beefier machine than you need for pure storage needs. You could get by with much less powerful hardware.

Drive enclosure:
- Case with PSU - ~$60
- 3 hotswap 5-in-3 cages = $300
- 3 Sil3726 port multipliers = $240
- cables - ~$20.

Total cost for a drive enclosure with 15 hotswap bays and eSATA connectivity = $620. Each drive enclosure can handle up to 15TB.

Drives:
- 500GB - $99 each
- 750GB - $130 each or so lately
- 1TB - $220 each or so lately.

I have 30 drives right now with mixed sizes of 750GB, 500GB and 250GB.

[SexualChocolate]

I posted this elsewhere but this clearly seems to be the best place for my questions.

Ive got 9 X 500GB drives currently (6 are full 3 are empty).

Ive got an old ICH5R motherboard/cpu/videocard/ram etc etc Id like to use (only 4 SATA150 ports) but I have a another setup I can use if need be that has 5 SATA300 and 1 ESATA port.

The cheapest non-hotswapple way for me to get all the drives into one case was the $100 Aero case and a few of the Cooler Master 4 in 3 adapters. If there is a better/cheaper choice let me know.

I can get Server 2008 via my Technet subscription so thats not an issue.

What do I need to pick up to complete this box and setup a software raid5 with server 2k8?

Are there decent SATA cards out there in the $50 range? I was looking at the basic promise cards listed in the Build an HTPC thread, but a few $ wont kill me for better performance.

One final question.. I assume building this array in windows will format the drives as I add them in so I need to swap data off the 6 filled drives over to the 3 empty ones correct? Also using software raid can I add additional drives later or do I need to add 3 at a time and build another array?

[kapone]

Guys, I still have two of these motherboards (Tyan s5360G2NR, e7520 chipset), two 3.2GHz Xeon Noconas and a couple of memory modules left over from my build and testing (I had bought quite a few). I have actually built and sold a couple of systems based on these, and these are some of the left overs. I just don't have the time to build more right now. Before I put them on fleabay, any of you guys interested?

The specs of the motherboard are:

1.2 – i7520 S5360 Hardware Specifications
Processors
- Dual Intel® Xeon “Nocona” processors
- Two ZIF mPGA604 sockets
- Onboard EVRD 10.1
- 800 MHz FSB support
- Supports Intel Extended Memory 64 Technology (EM64T)

Expansion Slots
- Three PCI-X 133/100/66 MHz slots*
- One PCI-X 100/66 MHz slot
- One PCI-X 66 MHz slot- One (x 8) PCI-Express slot
- One 32-bit/33 MHz PCI 2.2 slot
- Four PCI-X, one PCI-Express (x 8), and one PCI independent buses
- Total seven usable slots Chipset
- Intel Lindenhurst E7520 chipset
- MCH North Bridge and ICH5R South Bridge chips
- Two PXH I/O Bridge chips
- Winbond W83627HF Super I/O chip Memory
- Eight DDR-333/266 DIMM sockets
- Up to 32/16 GB of Registered DDR266/333
- Supports ECC type memory modules Integrated IDE (Parallel ATA)
- Provides two PCI bus master channels for up to four UDMA IDE devices
- Support for UDMA 33/66/100 IDE and ATAPI devices

Integrated Serial ATA (SATA) Host Controllers
- Provides independent DMA operation on 2 ports
- Data transfer rates up to 1.5GB/s
- Supports RAID 0 or 1 (with 82801ER/ICH5R chip)
- Adaptec’s driver and option ROM Optional SCSI module (Tyan M7902)
- Adaptec AIC7902 dual-channel Ultra320 SCSI controller
- Operating at 64-bit PCI-X bus
- Supports Intel ‘s RAIDIOS™ and Adaptec’s Zero-Channel RAID logics
- Supports Adaptec’s HostRAIDTM
- Two 68-pin SCSI connectors Integrated I/O
- One floppy connector for up to two drives
- Two 9-pin UART serial support (1 port via cable---optional)
- One 25-pin ECP/EPP parallel header
- PS/2 mouse & keyboard stacked connectors
- Six USB 2.0 ports (2 rear USB connectors, four front USB ports via optional cables)

BIOS
- Phoenix BIOS 8 Mb flash ROM
- Supports ACPI Power Management: S1, S4 and S5 modes
- Auto detection of memory size
- Auto configuration of IDE hard disk types
- User settings of hardware monitoring
- Multiple boot options including PXE
- Supports Console Redirect

Form Factor
- Extended ATX (12" x 13”)
- One EPS ATX/12V 24-pin system power connector
- One SSI EEB v3.51 complaint 8-pin split CPU power connector
- Stacked PS/2 mouse/keyboard ports
- Stacked two USB ports
- One serial, one parallel and one VGA ports
- Two RJ45 connectors

Integrated PCI Graphics
- ATI Rage XL PCI controller
- 8 MB Frame Buffer

Integrated Dual GbE LAN Controllers
- Dual 10/100/1000 GbE LANs
- Intel 82546GB controller
- Supports ASF1.0 or IPMI1.5
- Two RJ45 connectors with LED’s

Optional SATA RAID module (Tyan M8110/M8120)
- Adaptec/Marvell 64-bit PCI-X SATA-I controller
- Eight or four 1.5 GB/s SATA ports
- High-performance command queuing with EDMA support
- Supports SATA RAID 0, 1, 10
- Adaptec ZCR support

System Management
- ADI ADT7463 H/W Monitor IC
- Three 4-pin (3-pin compatible) fan connectors
- Six 3-pin system fan headers
- Tachometer monitoring and PWM control for certain fans
- One 2-pin chassis intrusion header
- SMBus connectors
- Temperature and voltage monitoring
- Watchdog timers
- Optional Tyan‘s M3291 SMDC (Server management Daughter Card) IPMI 2.0 via a 2x25 header
Regulation

- FCC Class B (Declaration of Conformity)
- European Community CE (Declaration of Conformity)

The two CPUs (matched pair) are 800MHz socket 604 3.2GHz Xeons (with heatsinks)

There's 6 sticks of memory, all 1GB each in 2 sets (four are one speed, and 2 are a different speed, so you can have either 4GB or 2GB, but not 6GB on the same motherboard).

I usually don't throw this kind of stuff here on AVS, but since so many of you have asked me about the hardware I run, I thought of offering some of the same here first, before I put it on fleabay. These are some serious high end server components.

[kapone]

I guess not. Goes on fleabay.

[spectrumbx]

For those building file servers to host media content, you should evaluate if a snapshot RAID solution like FlexRAID Basic will suffice.

Two other versions of FlexRAID with different specs are to be soon released, but FlexRAID Basic is the only current release.

If all you do is add new files to your RAID and rarely edit or delete the content, a snapshot RAID might be all you need.

This would save you money and remove all sort of limitations that exist with traditional RAID solutions.

More importantly, you can have some of your data hosted under a traditional RAID solution and have your archiveable data parity protected using FlexRAID Basic.

It is not for everyone, but it might be for you.

[kapone]

A slight deviation from my usual storage experiments..

Believe it or not, I'm running out of machines! So, anyway, I needed to setup a couple of new machines to be used as app and web servers as well as test machines that I could wipe and reinstall at will, in addition to potentially running multiple Windows using VMWare. By my count I needed 6 new machines....that's a lot of physical space...

Answer: 1U cases. I got a couple of Supermicro 811T chassis' for a song..literally..$40 shipped (with 2 SATA hotswap bays and a 350w PSU)!

However, building a 1U machine is slightly different from building a regular machine as you are very space constrained, ESPECIALLY height wise, since the damn enclosure is only 1.7" tall. ANother thing was that I did not really want to use server motherboards. Why? They generally use more expensive RAM, and offer very little if any overclocking. Both are almost a no no for a geek like me. However "most" desktop motherboards don't fit in 1U cases, mostly because of the audio header that is much taller, and will never fit into a 1U case. I was prepared to take a dremel and chop the damn thing off.

So, I started searching for the "right" motherboard for these machines. The criteria was:

- Must fit into a 1U chassis
- Must use regular DDR2 RAM
- Must use regualr desktop processors (not Xeons etc), whether AMD or Intel, but Intels overclock better, so top of the list was socket 775.
- Must offer the ability to overclock.

Most of the mATX motherboards were out because they offer very little to no overclocking (although I'm sure I missed a few). So it was gonna be ATX. After a fairly exhaustive search for the "right" motherboard and checking up on specs and what not, I finally settled on the Gigabyte P35-DS3L.

- It's slightly shorter depth wise than a regular ATX board, so it'd be helpful in a 1U case.
- Great overclocker
- Uses regular DDR2 RAM and can go upto 8GB.

Ordered that and an E2160, which is a great overclocker chip (I love this processor btw).

Slapped everything together..and it FITS. Just barely, but fits. I was afraid the NB heatsink and/or the audio header may not fit and I was prepared to do some surgery, but damn, if the thing didn't fit just right in. Ordered a crappy MSI PCI-e video card, a supermicro pci-e riser card (which btw, they advertise that it will work with only Supermicro motherboards. BS. It wil work with any motherboard. ). Slapped everything in and fired it up..voila! It's alive!

Ran some basic tests, and went straight to overclocking. Long story short, the 2160 is humming along at 3GHz (for a $70 processor, that's just amazing. And a dual core to boot), nice and purdy...man, this is a sweet processor. That's a 67% overclock!

The system with everything hooked in (4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, slim optical DVD drive, 3 fans, the MSI video card) draws just about 85w at the wall socket. That's pretty darn amazing, considering it's running a highly overclocked processor and a video card to boot.

Total cost of this "server":

- Supermicro chassis - $40
- Motherboard - Gigabyte P35-DS3L - $83
- RAM - A-Data 4GB - $70
- Intel E2160 - $70
- Slim DVD drive - $10 (from eBay)
- CPU cooler - Dynatron P168 - $22
- Riser card - SUpermicro - $10
- Video card - $15 (after MIR)
- 500GB HDD - $90

Total = $340! That's just absurd..and these are all new components.

Here's some hardware porn..

[kapone]

I just realized something really really interesting with this board (and now I'll have to check other boards as well). This board can Wake on LAN from COMPLETE OFF if you send it a magic packet (there's lots of utils to do that). This means, I could be sitting in my den, and turn this server on from complete off, without geting my butt off the chair.

Very cool.

[mym6]

Most WOL work this way...although I've noticed that my Mac is one particular exception. It has to have been booted once since being plugged in. If it loses power while off and power is restored, WOL doesn't work. That is odd.

[Eldron]

Kapone, how is the sound level on this? I have a lot of 1U and 2U servers in my data center, but would not want them in my home. I see the cases you have do not have the normal wall of fans that come with most 1U setups.

I have a rack for these, but the noise is a major concern. I turned on an IBM x345 and it sounded like a 747 was powering up.

[kapone]

They are loud..pretty loud. But my rack is in my garage...and the garage is insulated. I'd never want a stack of these inside the house.

Oh, and the Supermicro chassis does not have the typical wall of 40mm fans (as is typical in a 1U case), it uses two 100mm fans in a blower configuration. These fans are mounted slightly abive the bottom of the case. They pull in air from the front of the case, and blow it over the motherboard. Actually works much nicer than 4-6 40mm fans.

[more-avs]

I knew windows home server was a bad idea when I realized it didn't allow me to delete or rename the pre-existing shares. Forget that it is junky software. I know many people have recommended this and realize you want to stick with what you are comfortable with, but coming from a former strictly windows user, Ubuntu with software raid 5 (mdadm) with the xfs file system is the way to go. I built a 5x500gb home server with it. set up samba and mediatomb (upnp server used for my ps3) and it works like a charm. headless just hit the power button to start it and the power button to shut it down.

I expanded the array twice without any problems (excellent for if you don't buy all your drives at once). And another good thing about it is mdadm uses the drives uuid so even if you switch sata ports or controllers or even systems the array will work just where it left off.

I tried WHS, Windows 2003 (raid5 on this OS is seriously flawed if you lose power abruptly data is guaranteed to be corrupted even if no write is being performed at time of power failure), solaris raid z etc.

mdadm is worth it for just the raid 5 expansion alone. imo.

[Cmedwards80]

Intresting you made that post. I been looking for a new OS for my new server. I tried WHS, Windows 28k, and UnRaid. They have the pros and cons but I'm not satisfied. I installed Ubuntu on my laptop recently and found it to be amazing. My first time ever working w/ Linux. I'm getting ready to install Ubuntu on my server right now.

[more-avs]

Originally Posted by Cmedwards80

Intresting you made that post. I been looking for a new OS for my new server. I tried WHS, Windows 28k, and UnRaid. They have the pros and cons but I'm not satisfied. I installed Ubuntu on my laptop recently and found it to be amazing. My first time ever working w/ Linux. I'm getting ready to install Ubuntu on my server right now.

The good thing about Ubuntu is it does a very good job of finding your hardware and installing drivers. I have 3 different sata controllers in my server each one with a different chipset and each driver was found on install.

All this for the low price of free.

[kapone]

Ah... It seems I'll have a HighPoint RocketRAID2522 card in house (sent as a tester). This card "claims" that it can do hardware RAID even across port multipliers. It has two mini-SAS ports that can fan out to 8 E-SATA ports, so effectively giving a 40 hard drive capacity to the card. Very interesting. I have actually never been a big fan of Highpoint, but this certainly would make a good test.

The specs are:

Support 8 hard disks, PM (Port Multiplier) Ready up to 32 Hard Drives (Which is the confusing part, some places it says 32, some places it says 40, hell even the Highpoint site has it different in different places).
Active/Failed LED
SAF-TE (SES2) enclosure management through JP45 connector
BIOS booting support by 512KB Flash Memory
Multiple RAID support
Support Port Multiplier
Online capacity expansion (OCE) and Online RAID level migration (ORLM)
Quick and Background initialization for quick RAID configuration
S.M.A.R.T monitoring hard drive status for reliability
Automatic unplug/plug detection and rebuild
Web browser-base RAID management software
Command Line Interface (CLI)
SMTP for email notification
Support over 2TB per volume
Flash BIOS in OS
Hot swap and hot plug

If this can do all those functions across port multipliers on 40 hard drives, I'll be quite impressed. The claimed write speed when using port multipliers is in excess of 250MBps. We'll see.

[dj9]

250 mbytes/sec writes for how many drives & what kind of RAID?

[kapone]

Originally Posted by kapone

Ah... It seems I'll have a HighPoint RocketRAID2522 card in house (sent as a tester). This card "claims" that it can do hardware RAID even across port multipliers. It has two mini-SAS ports that can fan out to 8 E-SATA ports, so effectively giving a 40 hard drive capacity to the card. Very interesting. I have actually never been a big fan of Highpoint, but this certainly would make a good test.

The specs are:

Support 8 hard disks, PM (Port Multiplier) Ready up to 32 Hard Drives (Which is the confusing part, some places it says 32, some places it says 40, hell even the Highpoint site has it different in different places).
Active/Failed LED
SAF-TE (SES2) enclosure management through JP45 connector
BIOS booting support by 512KB Flash Memory
Multiple RAID support
Support Port Multiplier
Online capacity expansion (OCE) and Online RAID level migration (ORLM)
Quick and Background initialization for quick RAID configuration
S.M.A.R.T monitoring hard drive status for reliability
Automatic unplug/plug detection and rebuild
Web browser-base RAID management software
Command Line Interface (CLI)
SMTP for email notification
Support over 2TB per volume
Flash BIOS in OS
Hot swap and hot plug

If this can do all those functions across port multipliers on 40 hard drives, I'll be quite impressed. The claimed write speed when using port multipliers is in excess of 250MBps. We'll see.

whoa...very interesting card...

1. It IS port multiplier capable. With the mini-SAS to eSATA cable, one of these cards can support 8 eSATA connections/port multipliers (the card has two external mini SAS connectors, each fans out to 4 eSATA).

2. It can support 40 drives (not 32 as we keep seeing in various places, including the ^%%$# Highpoint site). I connected it to to my port multiplier enclosures, and it recognized all 30 of my drives using only 6 connections, right away.

3. It DOES do hardware RAID over port multipliers..well..sort of..It's not true hardware RAID per se...but the CPU only gets hit about 10% or so when writing to one the RAID arrays.

4. The card does have a BIOS chip with bootable array support.

5. The card DOES do OCE and ORLM on arrays over multipliers. This is huge, as this is the only card I know, that supports port multipliers, hardware RAID, AND can do OCE/ORLM over that.

6. Supports hot spares.

7. Hotswaping drives is not an issue, they are recognized right away (although it does emit an annoying beep anytime you swap a drive...and it's LOUD)

8. The driver/firmware has some weirdness, where if your drives are in an external enclosure (like mine are), the HDDs MUST be powered on before you power on your system, otherwise the management utility fails to see your array(s). Even though Windows can see them perfectly fine..go figure. Updated drivers/firmware may fix this.

9. The card does get warm. The heatsink on it, is almost hot when doing intensive I/O.


Now, the most important aspect...PERFORMANCE.. In one word, I'm quite impressed.

Setup:

- RAID 5 array using 5 drives, Server 2008 (had to use Vista drivers), connected over a Sil3726 port multiplier.

Performance:
- Reading from the array exceeds 250MBps.
- Writing to the array from another RAID 5 array = ~180MBps - very impressive, over port multipliers.
- Writing to the RAID array froma single hard disk = ~60MBps (obviously limited by the read rate of the single disk).
- Writing to the array over hardwired gigabit, using a RAID 0 array on the workstation = ~85MBps (limited by gigabit wire speeds).
- Writing to the array over hardwired gigabit, using a single disk on the workstation = ~55MBps (limited by the single disk read speed).

All in all, the performance is about the same, probably a little bit better, compared to software RAID 5 using Windows Server 2008, except for the (and very big benefits) addition of OCE, ORLM, hot spares, RAID 50 support and notifications.

Is that worth ~$350?? You decide. I'm still grappling with whether I wanna keep the damn thing, or return it. I kinda like the card..very nice. My test system was using an ASUS P5M2-E motherboard, an E2160, 4 GB RAM, with EIST enabled, when the multiplier's only 6x, the system idles around 80w (the card eats up about 10w), when the multiplier hits 9x (for full 1.8GHz), the system hits about 99-100 watts. Not bad at all.

[Bokusf]

Kapone ur my Hero

[kapone]

Ahhh....fun with Linux!

I like it! This is Fedora 9 using the same hardware as before and with Port multipliers and Sil3124 card. Single RAID-5 volume made up of five 250GB disks.

Client is Vista 64 bit. Hardwired gigabit using CAT6.

[dj9]

What do you get on the local machine? Have you ever copied between RAIDs on two different machines? I'm thinking about buying an extra PCI-E NIC and setting up a link aggregation group, even though I don't have a need to do so.

I am using a PCI-e sil3124 and get 150-220 mbytes/sec in RAID5 reads, tested unscientifically (with dd), depending on which array I'm copying from. (320gb Seagate: around 170-190, 400gb Seagate: around 190-220, 750gb WD: around 150-170).

[yetis]

Originally Posted by Eldron

Kapone, how is the sound level on this? I have a lot of 1U and 2U servers in my data center, but would not want them in my home. I see the cases you have do not have the normal wall of fans that come with most 1U setups.

I have a rack for these, but the noise is a major concern. I turned on an IBM x345 and it sounded like a 747 was powering up.

Hi, its been a while since I posted on here. I recently discovered this sever case. Note that the sound level is 36 dBA. This is pretty bloody quiet! The one question I have, is there a Server array that is equally quiet.

http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1...85&modelmenu=1


No garage here in NYC!

[MikeSM]

Well, a few updates for folks. I have a friend who got a new P45 based motherboard with the ICH10R southbridge on it to upgrade his linux based software raid server. After a lot of conversations with the linux programmers who write SATA drivers, it appears to be the case that despite telling everyone last year (http://www.dailytech.com/More+Intel+...rticle8077.htm) they were adding it and a bunch of other I/O features, Intel turns out to not have built in FIS switching support into the ICH10R after all! What losers. You have to plow through the datasheet for the ICH10 to figure out they made hardly any changes at all to the southbridge over the old ICH9R. Sigh.

I hope this news gets to anyone who was counting on this support before buying a P45 board for this purpose. Maybe in the ICH11...

The good news is that there is a pretty decent discrete PCI-E based solution that works very well in software RAID mode under linux, based on the Marvell 88SX7042 chipset. This is found in many 4 and 8 port PCI-E SATA II controllers, such as the Highpoint 23XX and 25XX series. It supports FIS switching using PMP's and is VERY fast, and supported very well in the most recent linux kernels. You can get them in X4 and X1 PCI-E controllers, and there are versions that are PCI-X flavored as well.

There is a pretty detailed review of the performance of this controller here: http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/am...es/sonnet/e4p/ . As you can see, it doesn't suffer from a 120 MB/s limit on throughput the way the SI3132 does.

One issue though, the Highpoint versions of controllers that use this chip seem to have a strange issue where they corrupt non-raid disks under linux when not using the proprietary drivers, probably due to the firmware onboard marking non-raid disks do their proprietary management software can index it properly. This does not appear to be present in non highpoint based 88SX7042 cards like the Adaptec 1430SA, or Rosewill RC-218. For linux, you can just use the builtin sata_mv driver and avoid all the proprietary stuff.

The adaptec 1430SA is available from newegg for about $105, and under $100 wholesale, and is an X4 card. My friend is going to get one and if it works well I'll upgrade my system to it as well.

That's a pretty decent price for a high performance SATA controller that can support 20 disks with PMP's.

[sdheda]

Does anyone know if there is a backplane that has a port multplier built in?

[MikeSM]

Originally Posted by sdheda

Does anyone know if there is a backplane that has a port multplier built in?

Most of the enclosures I have seen with builtin PMP's are external. I assume you are asking about one that is internal right?

[kapone]

Originally Posted by sdheda

Does anyone know if there is a backplane that has a port multplier built in?

Originally Posted by MikeSM

Most of the enclosures I have seen with builtin PMP's are external. I assume you are asking about one that is internal right?

As Mike said, most of the one's that have a PM built in are external. However, Addonics makes internal port multipliers as well. The layout of these is like a regular PCI card, except it doesn't plug into any slot as such. To use something like this, you'll need an HBA that has internal PM capabale SATA ports. (There's several out there).

Combine the internal port multiplier with a 5-in-3 cage and your setup can be all internal.

[redtyler1]

I feel like an idiot but what is an HBA? Plus, are there any motherboards that are port multiplier capable?

Here's the internal port multiplier:
http://www.addonics.com/products/hos...er/ad5sapm.asp

Alex

[kapone]

HBA = Host Bus Adapter

Yes, there's several PM capable motherboards. Anything that has Sil 3132 or Sil3124 based controllers onboard is PM capable. There's other chipsets that are supposedly PM capable (Marvell), but I have not played with them, so I can't say one way or the other.