I have done quite some research over the past few years on the best (ie. simple, robust, inexpensive, and performant) SATA/SAS controllers for ZFS. Especially in terms of throughput analysis (many of them are designed with an insufficient PCIe link width). I have seen many questions on this list about which one to buy, so I thought I would share my knowledge: http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=10 Very briefly:
- The best 16-port one is probably the LSI SAS2116, 6Gbps, PCIe (gen2) x8. Because it is quite pricey, it's probably better to buy 2 8-port controllers. - The best 8-port is the LSI SAS2008 (faster, more expensive) or SAS1068E (150MB/s/port should be sufficient). - The best 2-port is the Marvell 88SE9128 or 88SE9125 or 88SE9120 because of PCIe gen2 allowing a throughput of at least 300MB/s on the PCIe link with Max_Payload_Size=128. And this one is particularly cheap ($35). AFAIK this is the _only_ controller of the entire market allowing 2 drives to not bottleneck an x1 link. I hope this helps ZFS users here! -mrb _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
