Low profile SATA card

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xy16644

I currently use a HP dc5800 SFF for my FreeBSD server which has one low profile PCI slot in it.

Can anyone recommend a low profile PCI SATA card that has 2 SATA ports on it (no more than 4 SATA ports) and works with FreeBSD 9? I don't need/want any RAID.

Thanks! :e
 
I missed that, thanks! So, any recommendations for a PCI low profile SATA card with 2 or 4 ports that will fit in this type of machine?
 
Stay AWAY from the Promise SATA TX4 controllers! Seriously, there are complains all over the Internet about them, and a few PRs that have been left opened for years.

I would go for a low profile LSI based card. Just make sure it runs under the mps(4)() driver.
 
olav said:
Yes it will work without any setup :)
Click to expand...

Aaah, thanks for that. Just wanted to check.

I thought I'd give a bit more background as to what I am wanting to do. Currently I run an i386 FreeBSD 9 server on an HP dc5800 desktop. In this machine I run two 320GB 5400RPM 2.5" drives mirrored with ZFS and GELI for encryption. As I have posted elsewhere the performance isn't bad...its just not great. This is due to my CPU not supporting AES-NI and/or the slowish disks I have. I also have a single ZFS GELI disk but thats used purely for backups (500GB 7200RPM).

So this week I so on a local web site that they are selling these:

OCZ Vertex 2E 120GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive

for £37 each! So what I wanted to do was buy 4 of these and setup a striped mirror ZFS GELI pool (about 200GB of usable space). I can connect all 4 of these drives to the SATA ports on the motherboard (I don't use an optical drive in this machine). I was then going to use the SATA PCI Express card for the backup drive.

To fit all these drives in this desktop chassis I was going to use this bracket:

Lian Li BZ-525B 5.25" Rack to 4 x 2.5" Adapter

So my question is, will I see a nice performace boost in my server going from slowish 5400RPM drives to using SSD drives? This may sound like a silly question but the only reason I ask is because I am new to running GELI. I have gone from a 5400RPM drive to SSD in my laptop and that was a HUGE improvement but what can I expect in FreeBSD when everything (except /boot) is encrypted with GELI?

Thanks for any comments or suggestions! :e

PS: I did look at the Soekris hardware encryption card but its silly expensive for me to buy it and ship it over here!
 
There will be some performance improvement from the near-zero seek times on the SSDs. But without AES-NI, encryption will still be the bottleneck, not drive bandwidth.
 
wblock@ said:
There will be some performance improvement from the near-zero seek times on the SSDs. But without AES-NI, encryption will still be the bottleneck, not drive bandwidth.
Click to expand...

I was afraid someone would say that! Its a pity there aren't more AES-NI addon cards like the Soekris one at more affordable prices. I'm not willing to give up GELI encryption now that I have it so AES-NI is the only way forward to improve performance then.

Decisions decisions...
 
$75 is cheaper than the new computer you'd need to support a processor with AES-NI. If you have to have GELI, and can't live with the unaccelerated speed, there aren't a lot of options.
 
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