3Ware card is a mover and a shaker

3WARE CONTROLLERS had always been at the top of my list for systems running FreeBSD or Linux since I was first introduced to them a few years back. They have had a proven track record with supporting both of these operating systems as well as the community around them. All the while Adaptec still attracted my business for the Microsoft side, until a recent move that required users to register their products before drivers and utilities could be downloaded. Since I started the review of the 3Ware card, Adaptec has gone back to not requiring cards to be registered.

Just recently, I was in the planning stages to replace my primary e-mail, web and data server, and was intending on using an Adaptec card in the new system. A slight problem occurred though, when my existing primary server died. Having a backup server at another location kept the traffic flowing, but it did bring everything to a crawl.

One of the things I use my servers for is to host a few domains with very large SQL databases. I have always been one of those people who insist on fault tolerant disk arrays, but also need to have a large storage capacity. A traditional SCSI was the original plan for the server, but the problem for me was that I did not have the budget at the time to spend a small fortune on SCSI drives. After many bad experiences with P-ATA (Parallel ATA) RAID devices I was extremely hesitant to install S-ATA. Enter 3Ware.

One of the biggest attractants to 3Ware for this project was that they supported 12-drive arrays for S-ATA. Only a few companies on the market support large ATA drive arrays on a single controller, and out of those companies 3Ware has always maintained a good reputation. The question at hand for me was if I could overcome my reluctances to use a S-ATA solution to run my primary server. S-ATA has only just recently begun to penetrate entry level servers in the Tier One system manufactures.

3ware touted that their advanced StorSwitch RAID architecture would deliver the highest hardware RAID performance in its class. StorSwitch is a point-to-point, non-blocking switched architecture designed for highest system performance. Their 9500S series of RAID controllers were stated to deliver in excess of 400 MB/sec sustained RAID 5 reads and over 100 MB/sec RAID 5 sequential writes with less than 3% CPU utilization.

The 9500S-12 cards support RAID 0, 1, 10, 5, 50, and single disk (JBOD) configurations. Some of the solutions that this controller is geared for include security and surveillance, super computing, video on-demand (my next project), NAS storage, and disk-to-disk backup

The main features of the 9500S-12 cards include:

Optimized hardware XOR RAID 5 engine provides true hardware based RAID and intelligent drive management functions
Each 3Ware 9500S-12 controller comes standard with 128 MB of ECC protected SDRAM, that is easily upgradeable to 256 MB.
The 9500S-12 is expandable to include a battery backup unit (BBU).

Another feature for those users who need to expand their capacity on the fly is that the 9500S-12 provides an easy interface to grow the array when needed.

Bootable array support for greater fault tolerance
Variable stripe size for performance tuning by application
Multiple array background initializations for immediate data redundancy
Host controller and drive command queuing for highest performance
Multiple card support (up to four) within a system for large storage requirements
Multiple logical volumes and RAID levels can exist on one card for maximum configuration flexibility
Legacy and S-ATA II out of band (OOB) staggered drive spin-up support
Hot-swap and hot-spare support for data availability
Dynamic sector repair for robust data protection
S.M.A.R.T. disk drive monitoring for reliability
SMTP support for email/pager notification
Emergency Flash Recovery protects against power failure during firmware upgrades

Most of the features listed above, are standard on most SCSI RAID controllers, and some of the more advanced ATA RAID solutions. One of my personal favorite features on the 9500S-12 controllers are the multiple types of administration interfaces, and their ease of use.

3Ware offers three ways of administrating their card. The first is through their 3ware BIOS Manager (3BM), a BIOS style configuration tool. The second is the 3ware Disk Manager 2 (3DM 2), a browser-based management tool. For more advanced users 3Ware also has a command line interface (CLI), which is a scriptable configuration tool.

One of the features new to the 3Ware's 9000 series of cards is 3DM 2 (3Ware Disk Management 2). This is a software layer between the user and the RAID controller. Once the arrays are initially created in the hardware BIOS of the RAID card, the arrays can be maintained and updated through the 3DM2 software. The 3DM2 application is web-based, and allows administrators to maintain RAID arrays through a web browser either locally or remotely.

Operating system support is always a big question when deploying hardware. 3Ware is on top of their driver development and support. Right out of the box and fully supported, 3Ware users looking to setup a system can find operating system support for Microsoft Windows 2000 (x86), Microsoft Windows XP (x86, Opteron), Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (x86, Opteron), Red Hat Linux 9.0 (x86, Athlon), Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 WS (x86, Athlon, Opteron), SuSE Linux 8.2 (x86, Athlon), SuSE Linux 9.0 (x86, Athlon), and FreeBSD 4.9 and 5.2 (x86). 3Ware also provides an open source driver here for operating systems that are not directly supported.

On 3Ware's support site, they do offer a comprehensive list of motherboards that they have tested for compatibility which can be found here. They also offer a list of hard drives they have tested for compatibility which can be found here.

Although I wasn't able to acquire a chassis that supported multi-lane controllers, 3ware offers an innovative S-ATA cabling solution for large-scale arrays, where space and airflow are at a premium. Multi-lane controllers require that you use a backplane with multi-lane connectors. I was able to find out that AIC, Chenbro, Ci Designs offered chassis' that include these backplanes. The 3ware multi-lane controllers combine a very robust and reliable, locking cable/connector that integrates four S-ATA ports into one on the controller side. 3Ware's multi-lane cable/connectors are based on the Infiniband SFF-8470 specification. 3Ware 9500S series support the multi-lane backplane solution in 8 and 12-port cards.

In the month and a half since I set up the server, I have been extremely happy with the ease of set up, performance, and stability of the 3Ware 9500S-12 S-ATA RAID controller. Not only did it outperform my expectations, using the 3Ware controller also allowed me to keep the system under budget. I would highly recommend anyone looking for an alternative to SCSI in performance and price to take the 3Ware controllers into consideration. µ

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