PCI SATA controller recommendations for ubuntu 9.04 (jaunty)?

[metadaptive]

Hi folks,

Am wondering if any of my fellow DIY-NAS builders out there can share their experiences/recommendations on getting PCI SATA controllers to play nice under ubuntu server 9.04.

My set up is a D945GCLF2 / 2 GB DDR2 / ubuntu 9.04 + webmin (sucessfully set up courtesy of Tim's very fine tutorial - thank you sir!) with 2 x samsung 500GB HD502HIs in RAID 1 for storage and a separate 40GB segate PATA drive which the OS sits on.

I'd like to add another couple of internal sata drives but as my MoBo only has 2 sata ports that would mean adding a PCI controller card, and a rummage through google quickly shows that can mean some serious pain, especially if you go with an ultra el cheapo card...

My needs are (in theory at least) fairly simple and are as follows:

• 2 x internal sata ports (more doesn't hurt but I only have space for 2 more drives)
• PCI interface
• plays well with ubuntu
• not crazy expensive - 3wares are nice but I'm not going to spend as much as the whole system cost again (£200/$300) on a controller card. $100 is ideally the most I'd spend, but I appreciate that may not be realistic- if so, tell me!

I don't need any of the following:

• hardware RAID - mdadm is fine for my needs.
• to boot from the array - it's for storage only
• super fast performance, but better than a crawl would be nice

eSATA would be nice for backups but via a PCI card I kind of reckon I won't see any speed difference vs usb2 - though that may well be wrong.

Currently my options seem to be:

• buy a PROMISE SATA300 TX4 or similar (4 ports but has fairly good ubuntu compatibility reports) - will cost me approx £45/$70
• take a punt on an el cheapo (probably SII) card and accept that it might not work
• upgrade my mobo to something like a VIA EPIA SN which has 4 sata ports on board + PCIe, and sell my little falls 2. tempting but expensive.

Do any of you fine people have advice for some one in my situation? Have searched pretty comprehensively (I think...) but not found what I'm looking for.

many thanks

meta

 

[00Roush]

First up I would not want to see you spend a lot on a PCI controller card. The more expensive cards have better support and more raid modes but being PCI are not really worth it in my opinion.

The PROMISE SATA300 TX4 card would be a good choice. You might be able to find something a little cheaper though. I would do some searching on Newegg and read through a bunch of reviews. The TX4 has a pretty good rating and looks to work out of the box with Ubuntu. Some of the Rosewill and SYBA cards look to have decent reviews, a lower price and also work with linux. Maybe the SYBA SD-SATA2-4IR. I have never used any of these so I am just going off of the Newegg reviews and also knowing the the Promise cards usually work as advertised.

You might be surprised by the speed you can get out of one of those cards. If nothing else is on the PCI bus you could see speeds of up to 100 MB/sec. Along with that eSATA speeds could possibly be way higher than USB. Remember that eSATA is basically SATA just external.

Not sure if that helps at all.

00Roush

 

[brandinb]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815121009

This is a great card but i see you only need 2 ports.

newer linux kernels should support most of the controllers on these cards

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...ption=&Ntk=&CFG=&SpeTabStoreType=&srchInDesc=

you can look up the controller chip on the card and almost all are natively supported.

 

[metadaptive]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for your advice. Will report back with how I get on.

cheers again

meta

 

[GioF_71]

Hello metadaptive, I have a similar setup (dual core atom little falls 2). I added the promise tx4 card and it works out-of-the-box with ubuntu (tested with 9.04 as well as with 8.04.2).

By the way, did you compile and install the realtek driver for the network card? It looks like the standard driver works well with our mainboard, but I experienced a network freeze while sharing a big (video) file to my mediacenter pc. I never had that problem again after I recompiled the realtek driver.
With ubuntu 8.04.2, the issues are bigger and quickly noticeable.

I recommend you to take a look at this wonderful guide:

http://www.jamesonwilliams.com/hardy-r8168

 

[metadaptive]

Hi GioF_71,

Thanks so much for an extremely helpful reply!

Will definitely check out the promise tx4 and report back with how I get on(just need to pay off a few other bits and pieces before I can do the upgrade unfortunately)

I haven't recompiled the network drive,r but have experienced some freezes, so will probably spend a merry hour having a crack at that this weekend...

many thanks again for the reply

meta

 

[GioF_71]

you're welcome! Post your experience just to let others know if the realtek driver fixes your issues too!

 

[metadaptive]

okay will do!

 

[bookmage]

The Silicon sata chipsets are pretty much compatible and working in ubuntu 9. You should have no problems with it. You could get the Sil 3114 SATA 1.5 or the newer more $$$ SATA3 version... This is on sale for $30 and has 4 internal or 2 esata... You can only use 4 ports at any given time though.


I will be using a Supermicro 8 port PCI-X sata controller for my next media server which should be coming in this weekend. On the Intel Atom 330 w/2GB and the 8ports sata controller inside a Morex 668 housing 8 x 2.5in drives. We'll see how ubuntu9 runs on it... and I'll see if I run into any network issues...

 

[GioF_71]

The Silicon sata chipsets are pretty much compatible and working in ubuntu 9. You should have no problems with it. You could get the Sil 3114 SATA 1.5 or the newer more $$$ SATA3 version... This is on sale for $30 and has 4 internal or 2 esata... You can only use 4 ports at any given time though.


I will be using a Supermicro 8 port PCI-X sata controller for my next media server which should be coming in this weekend. On the Intel Atom 330 w/2GB and the 8ports sata controller inside a Morex 668 housing 8 x 2.5in drives. We'll see how ubuntu9 runs on it... and I'll see if I run into any network issues...

well the supermicro card is PCI-X not pci, there could be performance penalties if you use it on a pci slot. At least with 8 drives running. Nothing painful but I think it's pci-x for a reason.
Anyway I think it can be a cool setup. However, how do you think to keep 8 drives cool in that case? Any backplane? Please report other detail, I'm interested!

 

[bookmage]

Yes it is PCI-X but its backwards compatible. So if you have it in a PCI-x 64bit slot you will reach full speeds. If you stick it in a 32bit pci slot, it'll just run slower. But it will work.

For my current setup, the 100mb network is the bottleneck so running it on a regular pci is ok. When I move to gigabit network, then the pci bus will become the bottleneck, but that will be the limitation of the motherboard. Any ESata card will be limited to the pci bandwidth unless you find a atom 330 motherboard with pci-express. Then you'll get faster speeds.

I'm running 8 2.5in drives in 2 of these 4x 2.5 in a 5.25 bay
I'm also running the system drives in one of these 2x 2.5 into a 3.5 bay
So I can fit 10x 2.5in drives without any modding... something like 5TB raw disk space...

I wish they would release the dual 330 with a pcie x8 slot so i can stick a newer 8port controller card... and get faster speeds...

 

[GioF_71]

Yes it is PCI-X but its backwards compatible. So if you have it in a PCI-x 64bit slot you will reach full speeds. If you stick it in a 32bit pci slot, it'll just run slower. But it will work.

For my current setup, the 100mb network is the bottleneck so running it on a regular pci is ok. When I move to gigabit network, then the pci bus will become the bottleneck, but that will be the limitation of the motherboard. Any ESata card will be limited to the pci bandwidth unless you find a atom 330 motherboard with pci-express. Then you'll get faster speeds.

I'm running 8 2.5in drives in 2 of these 4x 2.5 in a 5.25 bay
I'm also running the system drives in one of these 2x 2.5 into a 3.5 bay
So I can fit 10x 2.5in drives without any modding... something like 5TB raw disk space...

I wish they would release the dual 330 with a pcie x8 slot so i can stick a newer 8port controller card... and get faster speeds...

Ok for pci-x it will work a bit slower.
Aren't those backplanes noisy? this could be a problem unless you put the units far from your pc/tv-room/bedroom.

About the atom 330 board, I just arrived to the conclusion that this board is worth only for its very low price, because if you buy a intel g31 chispet and a 45nm core2duo cpu like e7200, you get very similar idle (something like 3-4 watts more) power and much greater performance. Yes, at full load, the core2duo draws a lot of power, but some benchmark show that the overall performance is convenient in terms of time AND in terms of drawn power. And you will not have many issues regarding the number of sata ports (you can count on at least 4 on the mainboard, and you also have some pci/pci-ex slot).

Similar comments are valid for amd counterpart 780g chipset /4850e cpu or so.

 

[sammynl]

My needs are (in theory at least) fairly simple and are as follows:

• 2 x internal sata ports
• PCI interface
• plays well with ubuntu
• not crazy expensive

Promise Fasttrak TX2300 works excellent with Ubuntu Server 9.04, it is fully supported by Ubuntu 9.04 you don't need to hussle with drivers or anything at all, it is more or less transparent for Ubuntu. Configure as JBOD and simply add your disks to your linux array using mdadm. Sells for EURO 70,- here.

 

[ChrisJ]

Anyone see this new board?

http://www.logicsupply.com/products/ipx7a_ion330

Looks like an atom 330 with PCI-E 16 on board. This would make a VERY sweet NAS board with a hardware raid card.