LSI MegaRAID SATA and SAS 9260-8i RAID Card Review

[Apoptosis]

LSI MegaRAID SATA and SAS 9260-8i RAID Card Review

The LSI MegaRAID SATA+SAS 9260-8i RAID controller card is designed for to support up to eight-port 6Gb/s PCI Express SATA and SAS RAID for consumers looking for a way to secure data and to have speed. With data transfer rates of up to 6Gb/s per port, the MegaRAID SAS 9260-8i should be fast, but the question is how fast? Read on to see our results in RAID 0 and RAID 5.

Besides the small file random read/write the LSI 9260-8i surpassed the Adaptec 5805 in nearly all the SSD tests while the two cards were roughly equal in the HDD tests. What really helps the LSI 9260-8i is the SAS/SATA 6Gbps support enabling maximum performance on upcoming storage drives. This will be quite important with SATA 6Gbps SSDs easily pushing 500MB/s in sequential reads. It is a close call between the two cards but consideration must also be taken regarding firmware maturity. The Adaptec 5805 has been on the market for a while but the LSI 9260-8i is still relatively immature. There is a possibility that the small file random read/write performance could be bolstered, making the Adaptec 5805 effectively obsolete....

Article Title: LSI MegaRAID SATA and SAS 9260-8i RAID Card Review
Article URL: http://legitreviews.com/article/1178/1/
Pricing At Time of Print: $530 shipped

[MRFS]

http://www.dailytech.com/Crucial+C300+6 ... e17300.htm

[begin excerpt]

Beats Intel in all metrics

Micron announced the RealSSD C300 with 6Gbps SATA support early in December.

It partnered with the Marvell Technology Group to create a new proprietary controller that will be used exclusively with Micron's latest generation of SSDs.

The controller supports the use of ONFI 2.1 34nm NAND flash memory sourced from IMFT, Micron's joint venture with Intel.

The drive is able to reach a sustained sequential read speed of 355 MB/s, and a sustained sequential write speed of 215 MB/s.

It is also much faster than Intel's 160GB X25-M as seen in the attached graphs.

Testing was conducted by Calypso Systems, an independent third party tester, and shown to DailyTech today at Storage Visions.

[end excerpt]


We would LUV to see you re-run your tests with these SATA/6G SSDs.

A rotating platter is not a good test for a 6G RAID controller,
because the overall limiting factor is the rate at which
bits pass under the read/write heads: as you correctly observed,
this rate hovers around 150 MB/second, even with a 6G interface.

A SDRAM-based SSD with SATA/3G interface is also not
a good test either, because DDR2 easily surpasses the
limited bandwidth of that interface: compare 300 MB/second
with 6,400 MB/second with DDR2-800 (not even the fastest now).

The Gigabyte i-RAM and i-RAM Box were even worse with
a 150 MB/second interface (UGH!)

Can you contact Crucial and/or Micron to get a few review samples?

By adding these extra tests, your controlled comparisons should
easily demonstrate the advantages of migrating to SATA/6G and SAS/6G
Nand Flash SSDs, without incurring the premium prices associated
with PCI-Express devices like those from Fusion-io and OCZ.

(Why should high-speed storage be the exclusive domain of Enterprise budgets?)

Keep up the good work!


MRFS

[Gomeler]

SAS/SATA 6Gbps SSDs are the first of a set of devices I'd like to hook up to this card. Rotating hard-drives just haven't got the random read/write capabilities to really push the controller. I'd like to try 8 SSDs to really max out the controller, maybe I'll get lucky. There will be an update eventually, might be a few months till I can land enough drives though.

[gwolfman]

I've been looking at this card. Thanks for the review. Looks like I can wait a bit before needing to get this.

[Gomeler]

The Crucial C300 launch has my attention, let's see if I can grab a few to push this card to the limits

[patte88]

Hi there!

What I saw now is that adaptec introduced their new controller-serie, also compatible with 6GBs SATA: http://www.adaptec.com/de-de/products/c ... /sas-6805/
Which of the two (Adaptec 6805 / LSI 9260-8i) would you recommend for a linux, raid 5 setup, regarding speed and manageability?

Thanks for your advise!