Discussion:
arcoide ide raid controllers
Chris Snow
2003-04-16 17:58:14 UTC
Permalink
Do the arcoide raid controllers work well with openbsd?

Are they good value for money/reliable?

Any feedback appreciated.

TIA,

Chris
C. Bensend
2003-04-16 18:12:23 UTC
Permalink
Post by Chris Snow
Do the arcoide raid controllers work well with openbsd?
Are they good value for money/reliable?
I use several, and except for having to remove the pciide driver
from the kernel, they work flawlessly.

Benny
--
86. I will make sure that my doomsday device is up to code and properly
grounded.
--Peter Anspach's list of things to do as an Evil Overlord
Kit Halsted
2003-04-16 19:06:21 UTC
Permalink
Post by Chris Snow
Do the arcoide raid controllers work well with openbsd?
My experience with this product was not good. Aside from the hassle
of digging up a working floppy & a Win 98 box to put the setup disk
on bootable media, I ran into known-but-undocumented bug with Via
chipsets that prevented me from using the damned thing. Result: 1
week behind on project delivery, many wasted (unbillable) hours.
Post by Chris Snow
Are they good value for money/reliable?
Any feedback appreciated.
I was looking for 240GB of RAID 1 or 5 storage.

Arco controller: $250
(4) 120GB disks: $800
total: $1050

Adaptec 2400A: $315
(4) 120GB disks: $800
total: $1115

The Adaptec controller does RAID-5, which lets me use one of the
disks as a hot spare. The Adaptec controller is also a hell of a lot
faster.

On the other hand, Arco does get some points for customer service.
There was no hassle returning the infernal device.

Hope this saves you some headache,
-Kit
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin

"...qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum"
(...if you would have peace, be prepared for war) -Flavius Vegetius Renatus
Joseph C. Bender
2003-04-16 19:23:09 UTC
Permalink
Post by C. Bensend
Post by Chris Snow
Do the arcoide raid controllers work well with openbsd?
Are they good value for money/reliable?
I've had somewhat-okay luck with them. Here's a mostly-serious review
from Nick Holland a while back:

http://www.sigmasoft.com/~openbsd/archive/openbsd-misc/200007/msg01199.html
Post by C. Bensend
I use several, and except for having to remove the pciide driver
from the kernel, they work flawlessly.
This I'm wondering about. Was it because of the unit, or because of the
motherboard? I've got a SCO UNIX system at a client that is having lockup
issues any time there's very very heavy I/O (mostly on software updates
from a CD-ROM on a separate channel. Turning down the controller max speed
on the motherboard I'm using seems to help.

If you're looking at getting the total-enclosure system, be mindful, the
fans on the things are damned annoying, being high-pitched and loud.

I've never had any data loss with these units.



Signing off,

--
Joseph C. Bender
jcbender at benderhome dot net
C. Bensend
2003-04-16 20:43:53 UTC
Permalink
Post by Joseph C. Bender
This I'm wondering about. Was it because of the unit, or because of the
motherboard? I've got a SCO UNIX system at a client that is having lockup
I can only assume it was because of the unit or driver... I tried
the DupliDisk II (two separate units) on three different
motherboards, and they all hung unless I disabled pciide.

If I could afford it, I'd have one drop shipped to a developer,
but I don't really have that extra cash right now.

Benny
--
86. I will make sure that my doomsday device is up to code and properly
grounded.
--Peter Anspach's list of things to do as an Evil Overlord
Joseph C. Bender
2003-04-17 14:01:45 UTC
Permalink
Post by C. Bensend
Post by Joseph C. Bender
This I'm wondering about. Was it because of the unit, or because of the
motherboard? I've got a SCO UNIX system at a client that is having lockup
I can only assume it was because of the unit or driver... I tried
the DupliDisk II (two separate units) on three different
motherboards, and they all hung unless I disabled pciide.
Strange. I've not had that problem with the Arco DD-II boxen (with one
motherboard variant, mind you) on OpenBSD(3.1 at the time).

However, Nick Holland has tipped me off to a similiar product that I'm
highly considering replacing these Arco boxes with (if the client buys into
it).

http://www.accusys.com.tw/7500.htm
http://www.accusys.com.tw

Same thing as an Arco, but no config/mirroring util, and can do it on the
fly. Hell of a lot quieter, and no more SCO IDE issues. Does a nifity
Knight Rider pattern with the LEDs if nothing's going on. *grin*

I'm planning on pitching it to them as a way to help keep their
redundant/backup machine in sync. Right now, they're (supposed to be)
restoring their nightly backups to the redundant machine, testing the
tapes, but I'd like to remirror on a weekly basis, to get them familiar
with the process in case of failure.

I've got no experience with OpenBSD on it yet, but maybe Nick could chime
in on that. 8-)




Signing off,

--
Joseph C. Bender
jcbender at benderhome dot net
C. Bensend
2003-04-17 14:18:53 UTC
Permalink
Post by Joseph C. Bender
However, Nick Holland has tipped me off to a similiar product that I'm
highly considering replacing these Arco boxes with (if the client buys into
it).
http://www.accusys.com.tw/7500.htm
http://www.accusys.com.tw
Same thing as an Arco, but no config/mirroring util, and can do it on the
fly. Hell of a lot quieter, and no more SCO IDE issues. Does a nifity
Knight Rider pattern with the LEDs if nothing's going on. *grin*
Well, hell, if it does neater things with the LEDs... ;)

I'll have to check this out - I'm going to be buying another
RAID controller very shortly. How much does it cost? I'm
having no luck finding a price on their site...

Nick, any input?

Benny
--
86. I will make sure that my doomsday device is up to code and properly
grounded.
--Peter Anspach's list of things to do as an Evil Overlord
Joseph C. Bender
2003-04-17 14:57:29 UTC
Permalink
Post by C. Bensend
Well, hell, if it does neater things with the LEDs... ;)
I'll have to check this out - I'm going to be buying another
RAID controller very shortly. How much does it cost? I'm
having no luck finding a price on their site...
Good luck on getting it shipped from .tw. 8-) They only deal with
resellers.

pricewatch.com had listings for it around the $200 mark, not counting
shipping. Search for Accusys.



Signing off,

--
Joseph C. Bender
jcbender at benderhome dot net
Nick Holland
2003-04-17 16:22:35 UTC
Permalink
Post by Joseph C. Bender
I've got no experience with OpenBSD on it yet, but maybe Nick could chime
in on that. 8-)
Ah, called on stage by popular demand. 8)

So far, runs great on OpenBSD. But then, that was my experience on
the first Arco product I played with some time back (and still is --
the P100 it is running in has been absolutely flawless in operation.
This one is old enough, it isn't running pciide(4). Only "gripe" is
I can't say what happens in a real-life emergency, as one hasn't
occurred). The first and second generation Arco products don't
remirror on the fly in a generic sense (they do have SW remirror in
supported OSs (i.e., not OpenBSD, though I suspect implementing it
would not be horribly difficult -- basicly read every sector, and
write the exact same data back to disk would do it).

My attitude about RAID right now is even dimmer than it usually is,
having spent much of yesterday at a client who had a system do bad
things where the recovery was complicated by a HW RAID system that
had priorities that I didn't share at the time had me really wishing
I had the Accusys product rather than the multi-thousand dollar
"super-server" and its redundant duplicate.


Anyway, yes, I'm impressed with the Accusys 7500 box. A few
quirks -- I'm not wild about the fact that you have to get a
different box for Western Digital drives than you do for any others
(no, not an electrical difference, but the drive plugs directly into
the carrier, not through a cable, and WD drives are offset about
1.5m m from the rest of the industry's drives. I think they did this
so they could reduce the depth of the box by a cm or two -- this is
important in a lot of cases, where the thing might well run into your
RAM or CPU or whatever as it is...). The thing HAS to have a
full-height, 5.25" bay (or pair of half-heigh bays) to mount in, the
Arco product line is a lot more flexible. I haven't had an
opportunity to do the Nail Gun test yet, and since most of my drives
I would be willing to spike are WDs or otherwise so old they don't
fit in the carriers, I'm not sure I'll be able to (yes, I did figure
out how to get the cover off to get the nail gun in place. 8)

If there is interest, I'll do a review on advocacy@ in a while
(I really feel like it is too close to spam to be good misc@ material),
but a few tidbits:

* Remirror time for a pair of 80G 7200rpm IBM drives: ~6 hrs.
* Performance hit when untaring ports.tar.gz while remirroring: ~80%
(i.e., it runs MUCH slower, but ports.tar.gz is a really, really
bad case) (don't quote that number; I can't find what I did with my
time trial notes, that's from memory).
* Can't remember if I tried moving a RAID pack from one box to another
yet -- that's a critical test.
* Drives run very cool to the touch, fan is very effective.
* Distribution is, uh, interesting. Accusys isn't big on making their
resellers findable, googling for "accusys 7500" will lead you to
discover that a major reseller for these was TigerDirect.com, who
no longer carries it. HOWEVER, others are out there.
* No evidence that it supports LBA48. If someone wishs to hand me
a pair of LBA48 drives, I'll be happy to plug 'em in and find out,
but getting them back out of my hands after the fact might be, uh,
"interesting". 8)
* Using this system, you can mirror a drive after install, or can
"break" the mirror and run unmirrored simply by adding or removing
the box.
* useful light display -- shows mirror status, drive health, which
drive is deactivated, which drive(s) are being accessed, etc., and
when remirroring, what percentage of the remirroring is complete(!)
* Everything is controlled by two drive locks -- first locked down
drive is the "master", second is the "mirror".
* Drive box can be set as master or slave. So, yes, on a dual
channel system, you could, in theory, have four boxes, eight
drives...just find a case to hold it all, though.



dmesg from the system:

OpenBSD 3.3-current (GENERIC) #0: Sat Apr 5 16:51:08 EST 2003
***@fast.in.nickh.org:/usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/GENERIC
cpu0: Intel Pentium 4 ("GenuineIntel" 686-class) 2 GHz
cpu0: FPU,V86,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SYS,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,MMX,FXSR,SIMD
real mem = 534622208 (522092K)
avail mem = 490086400 (478600K)
using 4278 buffers containing 26832896 bytes (26204K) of memory
mainbus0 (root)
bios0 at mainbus0: AT/286+(00) BIOS, date 10/21/02, BIOS32 rev. 0 @ 0xf0010
pcibios0 at bios0: rev. 2.1 @ 0xf0000/0x10000
pcibios0: PCI IRQ Routing Table rev. 1.0 @ 0xf4710/208 (11 entries)
pcibios0: PCI Interrupt Router at 000:31:0 ("Intel 82371FB PCI-ISA" rev 0x00)
pcibios0: PCI bus #1 is the last bus
bios0: ROM list: 0xc0000/0xb000!
pci0 at mainbus0 bus 0: configuration mode 1 (no bios)
pchb0 at pci0 dev 0 function 0 "Intel 82845G/GL" rev 0x01
vga1 at pci0 dev 2 function 0 "Intel 82845G/GL Video" rev 0x01: aperture at 0xf0000000, size 0x8000000
wsdisplay0 at vga1: console (80x25, vt100 emulation)
wsdisplay0: screen 1-5 added (80x25, vt100 emulation)
uhci0 at pci0 dev 29 function 0 "Intel 82801DB USB" rev 0x01: irq 11
usb0 at uhci0: USB revision 1.0
uhub0 at usb0
uhub0: vendor 0x0000 UHCI root hub, class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1
uhub0: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered
uhci1 at pci0 dev 29 function 1 "Intel 82801DB USB" rev 0x01: irq 5
usb1 at uhci1: USB revision 1.0
uhub1 at usb1
uhub1: vendor 0x0000 UHCI root hub, class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1
uhub1: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered
uhci2 at pci0 dev 29 function 2 "Intel 82801DB USB" rev 0x01: irq 9
usb2 at uhci2: USB revision 1.0
uhub2 at usb2
uhub2: vendor 0x0000 UHCI root hub, class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1
uhub2: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered
"Intel 82801DB USB" rev 0x01 at pci0 dev 29 function 7 not configured
ppb0 at pci0 dev 30 function 0 "Intel 82801BA AGP" rev 0x81
pci1 at ppb0 bus 1
fxp0 at pci1 dev 8 function 0 "Intel PRO/100 VE" rev 0x81: irq 11, address 00:07:e9:a8:72:de
inphy0 at fxp0 phy 1: i82562ET 10/100 media interface, rev. 0
pcib0 at pci0 dev 31 function 0 "Intel 82801DB LPC" rev 0x01
pciide0 at pci0 dev 31 function 1 "Intel 82801DB IDE" rev 0x01: DMA, channel 0 configured to compatibility, channel 1 configured to compatibility
wd0 at pciide0 channel 0 drive 0: <Accusys ACS7500 C5VL>
wd0: 16-sector PIO, LBA, 78533MB, 16383 cyl, 16 head, 63 sec, 160836480 sectors
wd0(pciide0:0:0): using PIO mode 3, Ultra-DMA mode 5
atapiscsi0 at pciide0 channel 1 drive 0
scsibus0 at atapiscsi0: 2 targets
cd0 at scsibus0 targ 0 lun 0: <HL-DT-ST, CD-RW GCE-8400B, 1.02> SCSI0 5/cdrom removable
cd0(pciide0:1:0): using PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2
"Intel 82801DB SMB" rev 0x01 at pci0 dev 31 function 3 not configured
auich0 at pci0 dev 31 function 5 "Intel 82801DB AC97 Audio" rev 0x01: irq 3, ICH4 AC97
ac97: codec id 0x41445372 (Analog Devices AD1981A)
ac97: codec features headphone, 20 bit DAC, No 3D Stereo
audio0 at auich0
isa0 at pcib0
isadma0 at isa0
pckbc0 at isa0 port 0x60/5
pckbd0 at pckbc0 (kbd slot)
pckbc0: using irq 1 for kbd slot
wskbd0 at pckbd0: console keyboard, using wsdisplay0
pms0 at pckbc0 (aux slot)
pckbc0: using irq 12 for aux slot
wsmouse0 at pms0 mux 0
pcppi0 at isa0 port 0x61
midi0 at pcppi0: <PC speaker>
sysbeep0 at pcppi0
lpt0 at isa0 port 0x378/4 irq 7
npx0 at isa0 port 0xf0/16: using exception 16
pccom0 at isa0 port 0x3f8/8 irq 4: ns16550a, 16 byte fifo
fdc0 at isa0 port 0x3f0/6 irq 6 drq 2
fd0 at fdc0 drive 0: 1.44MB 80 cyl, 2 head, 18 sec
biomask ca60 netmask ca60 ttymask dae2
pctr: user-level cycle counter enabled
dkcsum: wd0 matched BIOS disk 80
root on wd0a
rootdev=0x0 rrootdev=0x300 rawdev=0x302


Nick.
--
http://www.holland-consulting.net
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