Non-raid PCIe SATA controller with 8 ports?

Hi,

is there any PCIe SATA controller with 8 ports that has
decent FreeBSD
drivers, including NCQ, and decent performance on the level
of the ICH
or Nvidia onboard ports?

I don't need hardware RAID.  I suppose I can use an 8-port
Areca as a
dumb controller, but that's kinda wastish.

Thoughts?
Martin
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Martin Cracauer <cracauercons.org>   http://www.cons.org/cra
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Martin Cracauer wrote:
> Hi,
>
> is there any PCIe SATA controller with 8 ports that has
decent FreeBSD
> drivers, including NCQ, and decent performance on the
level of the ICH
> or Nvidia onboard ports?
>   

As far as i know, there's no NCQ for the ata(4) driver, so
you can only 
use SCSI TCQ and NCQ on a true hardware controller like
Areca.
I think you need either a motherboard with 8 onboard
connectors, 
multiple PCI/PCIe cards or a hardware controller like
HighPoint 
RocketRaid 2320 PCI-e with 8 ports. This last one is quite
affordable 
and has quite good driver support i think.

> I don't need hardware RAID.  I suppose I can use an
8-port Areca as a
> dumb controller, but that's kinda wastish.
>   

Well, an Areca might give you the flexibility to use true
RAID and even 
on single disks you can benefit from increased performance
due to 
request reordering and the onboard buffercache. Be aware
that any 
controller with write-back cache offers a potential dataloss
risk, 
without the use of a battery backup unit (BBU).

Also, if you need performance, why would you want to use an
Areca as a 
normal controller, why not pick RAID0 or RAID5? Do you
really need 8 
seperate disks?

- Veronica
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Fluffles wrote on Fri, Jun 01, 2007 at 05:48:34PM +0200: 
> >I don't need hardware RAID.  I suppose I can use an
8-port Areca as a
> >dumb controller, but that's kinda wastish.
> >  
> 
> Well, an Areca might give you the flexibility to use
true RAID and even 
> on single disks you can benefit from increased
performance due to 
> request reordering and the onboard buffercache. Be
aware that any 
> controller with write-back cache offers a potential
dataloss risk, 
> without the use of a battery backup unit (BBU).
> 
> Also, if you need performance, why would you want to
use an Areca as a 
> normal controller, why not pick RAID0 or RAID5? Do you
really need 8 
> seperate disks?

I use software raid for a variety of reasons including:
- can put in disks on other controllers, such as in an
emergency put a
  P-ATA disk as a replacement.
- working SMART.
- more control, no "black box".
- buying one hardware raid controller is a joke from a
reliability
  standpoint, you'd need a second one on the shelf.
- freedom to move to a different controller.  To my
knowledge none of
  the hardware raid makers obey to the common disk file
format, not
  even optionally.  Neither does software raid, but software
raid
  doesn't bind me to a piece of hardware.
- as you mentioned, without the battery backup the cache on
the
  controller would have to be write-through, which disabled
much of
  the advantage of the thing.

I found the performance with modern CPUs to be more than
sufficient,
even on raid-5 writes.
http:/
/cracauer-forum.cons.org/forum/raid.html

The thing that I'm trying to solve is not speed as such. 
What goes on
my nerves is that I can't have NCQ on the NVidia SATA ports,
and hence
have to use the disk's write cache.  Also, boards with more
than 4
ports usually only have 4 ports on the primary controller
and the rest
of the ports are on some 32bit/33MHz PCI bus piece of junk
like the
Promise 3112.

Hence, a dumb but decent 8-port controller would give me
what I want.
(Well, that was when I thought we do have NCQ on ICH SATA
:-/)/

Martin
-- 
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%%%%%%%
Martin Cracauer <cracauercons.org>   http://www.cons.org/cra
cauer/
FreeBSD - where you want to go, today.      http://www.freebsd.org/
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> is there any PCIe SATA controller with 8 ports that has
decent FreeBSD
> drivers, including NCQ, and decent performance on the
level of the ICH
> or Nvidia onboard ports?
>
> I don't need hardware RAID.  I suppose I can use an
8-port Areca as a
> dumb controller, but that's kinda wastish.

What do you thing about the  SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8 64-bit
PCI-X133MHz SATA 8-Channel Card Controller ?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N
82E16815121009
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