SATA RAID controller recommendations

[Chris]

Michael's Stationery----- Original Message ----- 
From: Michael Cohn
Sent: Tuesday, August 02, 2005 2:54 PM
Subject: SATA RAID controller recommendations

> I just saw your post from back in November regarding
> SATA RAID controller recommendations.
>
> http://info.ccone.at/INFO/Mail-Archives/redhat/Nov-2004
>  /msg00119.html
>
> What controller did you wind up using?  I just purchsaed a
> Dell PowerEdge 420sc with 2x80gb SATA drives and would
> like to add a hardware RAID controller.  My plan is to run
> either Fedora 3/4 or SuSe.

Michael,

By far the best SATA RAID controllers with great support for Linux come from 
3WARE.  If you only have 2 drives, you can get away with their basic (~$120) 
model which can do RAID-0 and RAID-1, the 8006-2LP.  It works great!  We 
have everything they make from the basic 2-port model all the way up to a 
12-port models which run our 3TB storage backup systems.

Stay away from Adaptec and Promise controllers.  Promise controllers have 
serious issues with drivers and stability, while Adaptec outright abandons 
brand new products and doesn't provide almost any Linux support.  We had to 
toss several dozen of their 'brand new' zero channel SCSI RAID 2015S 
controllers because they announced that they would not provide drivers for 
kernel 2.6 - meaning FC2 and above, RHEL 4, etc.  They seem to be a "Windows 
only" shop these days.  I know it has nothing to do with SATA, but as a 
company in general I wouldn't buy any of their products anymore, not after 
spending thousands on controllers that we had to replace less than 6 months 
later because Adaptec decided they were going to support Windows only.

Chris