SAS5ir Rais card for terminal server???

[PaulGillespie]

Hi Guys,
wondering if anyone has any experience of the SAS5ir RAID cardfor a PE840. I need a terminal server for 5 users max. I was going to spec:
PE840
2.13 Xeon Proc
2GB Ram
SAS5ir Raid card in RAID 1
2 x 80 GB Sata disks.

The server will be used by 3-5 full time architects using autocad, office and maybe photoshop occasionally. My only concern with the spec is that the SAS5ir card wil be a bottleneck. and i should be going for a PERC5i and SAS disks.

Any one got any thoughts or experience of the SAS5ir and sata raid?

I've used other poweredges with SBS2003 with a perc 1.5 and 2 sata disks and they perform fine.

Cheers
Paul

 

[unguenstig]

at the per5ir you can also use SAS HD´s (...and have 3.0 GB/s - Max burst speed per channel or port) - so we have the bottleneck at the HD´s and not at the controller.
SAS - 384 MB/s
SATA - 150 MB/s

 

[PaulGillespie]

Thanks, for the info. Have you had any experience of the SAS5ir card though? only used the more expensive perc cards and the SAS5ir is much cheaper so just wondering why.

Thanks

Paul

 

[unguenstig]

the SAS5ir could only handle raid 0 and 1, no raid 5 or other possible, also you have less features:
only 2 virtual disk to manage and max 4 HD´s
one channel internal no external eclosure
no cache

 

[PaulGillespie]

Thanks again.

Do you know if this card uses up more system resources to operate? what i mean is, is it like host raid or is it a proper hardware raid card.

Cheers

 

[unguenstig]

no they don´t need system resources, but when you have high I/O Traffic at your array (over: SAS - 384 MB/s
SATA - 150 MB/s) then you have a prob with performance - for that the more expensive controllers have the romb cache.
it is a hardware raid card, but only raid 0/1 like posted, software based raid is another thing!

 

[PaulGillespie]

Thanks again!

 

[technome]

and have 3.0 GB/s"
As of right now this figure is totally useless as there are no motherboards anywhere near this system bus speed (industry hype), (aside from the hard drives speed)

SAS only starts to surpass u-320 SCSI array with more than 5 to 6 disks

For comparison of SATA,SCSI,SAS

http://tweakers.net/benchdb/suite/13

Terminal server lives on RAM, the most important part; personally I would go for 4 Gigs or more due to the applications involved. For cost/speed I would go with 4 or 6 SATA in raid 10. Your main speed will not be in the disk subsystem I/O, but from the ram available for sessions. Raid 1 is not fast enough, if you still want raid 1, raid adapters are not designed or optimized for raid 1, you would be better off with a cheaper standard SATA or SCSI adapter capable of hardware raid 1.

........................................
Chernobyl disaster..a must see pictorial

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/default.htm

 

[CRAIG2432]

Hi there.

I came accross this post by mistake, but I am posotive that I read that there are issues with TS and Autocad. I hope I am wrong, but it might be worth doing some reading. I hope this dose not cause too many problems, If i am wrong can you please let me know.

Cheers