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LSI Logic MegaRAID SAS 8344ELPFrom STORAGE Magazine
Vol 6, Issue 7 - September 2006 The rack server market is a clear target for SAS-based storage, but the majority of RAID controllers only cater for internal capacity. The 8344ELP brings together the best of both worlds, as it provides both internal and external 4-port interfaces. A low-profile design allows it to fit in rack servers from 1U upwards, as well as standard pedestal systems, and it comes with a PCI Express 4X interface. As you'd expect, it supports both 3Gb/sec SATA (serial ATA) and SAS drives, and both varieties can be mixed and matched on the same interface cable. Expansion options are particularly good, as the 8344ELP supports SAS expander technology, allowing it to handle up to 32 drives. The card is well built, with a solid aluminium heat sink looking after the speedy 500MHz Intel XScale IOP333 processor. The 128MB of embedded cache memory cannot be upgraded, but the card does accept an optional battery backup pack, which costs around £85. Array options are extensive, with the card supporting RAID-0, -1, -10, -5 and -50 arrays. And it is also ready to be upgraded to support RAID-6 and -60. To test performance, we installed the card in an NEC server running Windows Server 2003 SP1 and equipped with a dual-core 1.8GHz AMD Opteron 265 processor and 1GB of memory. We fitted the card to the system's 16X PCI Express slot and encountered no problems with installation, the card being identified correctly by the operating system and the appropriate drivers loaded from the bundled CD-ROM. It is worth noting that tests we have conducted previously on competing SAS controller cards have not proved as successful, with some failing to work correctly with a number of motherboards. Not so with LSI Logic, as the 8344ELP is yet another of its controllers that proved to be very amenable. We used a quartet of Seagate 15K.4 SAS hard discs and used the open-source
Iometer utility configured with one disk worker, 256KB transfer requests and 100
per cent sequential reads. We started with a single drive and then added a
second, third and fourth drive, each time assigning a new worker to each drive.
For array configuration, you can use the card's WebBIOS utility, which provides a smart graphical interface from where you can check drives and existing arrays, create new arrays and designate drives as hot-spares. LSI's new Windows MegaRAID Storage Manager (MSM) is a welcome addition, as it replaces the Power Console Plus utility, which has been looking dated for some time now. MSM provides a vastly improved management interface, which provides plenty of assistance and easier access to the various features. You follow a wizard for array creation or manually configure your own. Either way, it is easy enough to do, as you select the drives, choose an array type and leave the card to get on with building it. The MegaRAID 8344ELP is a good choice for businesses that want the best that
SAS technology has to offer. The card provides a fine range of features, has
excellent internal and external storage expansion capabilities and, as our tests
show, delivers top performance. ST |
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