[WBEL-users] LSI SATA 150-6 [Update: LSI SATA 150-2]

[Nick Bright]

I was so impressed with my LSI SATA 150-6, when the time came to 
purchase a 2ch RAID controller for a simple mirroring scenario, I was 
gung-ho to purchase the 2 channel version of this card. However, I have 
discovered that this card has some problems. Thought I would share with 
the list to prevent anyone from making the same mistake.

1) This is NOT a 2 channel version of the 150-4 or 150-6 (which are the 
same thing, essentially).
2) Under WBEL it simply shows up as two SATA drives (even though I 
configured it as a mirror in the firmware)
3) There is no driver for recent *nixes. It does NOT USE THE MEGARAID 
DRIVER. Repeat does NOT use megaraid.o as the product name would imply. 
This is not a MEGARAID card.
4) SLLLLLLOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW. It took *18* hours to build a simple mirror 
of two 80Gb drives. Yes, 18. Not 8. 18.

I can not reccomend this product to anyone. Lack of drivers, plus 
horrible performance make me say that this product is crap.

Oh yes, I also tried to install windows on it for giggles & grins. 
Windows (after F6'ing to install the correct driver) never could find a 
drive.

Hoffmann, Tony wrote:

>I would agree with this evaluation.  we've been seeing at least 30MB/s write
>and
>50MB/s read in a raid5 config with write-back and adaptive readahead
>activated.
>We have plugged in a 64bit/66MHz slot on a mainboard from Supermicro.
>
>My only complaint is no individual headers for disk activity LEDs.
>
>Tony
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: whitebox-users-admin@beau.org
>[mailto:whitebox-users-admin@beau.org]On Behalf Of Nick Bright
>Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2004 7:11 PM
>To: Aly Dharshi
>Cc: whitebox-users@beau.org
>Subject: Re: [WBEL-users] LSI SATA 150-6
>
>
>The card works excellently, with the stock megaraid.o driver that every 
>other MegaRAID product uses. I am quite satisified with performance and 
>compability. As well, the acompanying management software is pretty 
>good. Two thumbs up for this card.
>
>My test of the card was in my Del 1600SC (dual Xeon 2Ghz, 2Gb RAM) in a 
>PCI-X slot
>I used six Seagate 80GB drives (Model ST380013AS)
>
>In RAID 5, DirectIO caching, & Adaptive Read ahead the performance was a 
>bit better than a single IBM UltraStar 18Gb 10,000 RPM Ultra 160 drive.
>
>I can post some bonnie++ benchmark results if there is interest.
>
>Sustained writes of a 4Gb file (at 1Mb and 4Kb block sizes) resulted in 
>35Mb/sec write speeds.
>
>time dd if=/dev/zero of=testfile bs=4k count=1048576
>and
>time dd if=/dev/zero of=testfile bs=1024k count=4096
>
>were used to attain that result.
>
>
> - Nick
>
>Aly Dharshi wrote:
>
>  
>
>>No clue, but do let us know of your results, maybe I can be persuaded 
>>to by it :)
>>
>>Cheers,
>>
>>    Aly.
>>
>>Nick Bright wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>I'm buying an LSI SATA 150-6 (6 channel sata raid), and was wondering if
>>>anyone had tried using one of these with whitebox? I know it's
>>>supported, but I was wondering what someones results of actually using
>>>it are?
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>
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