Raid controller

work in progress.

Introduction

A fast and reliable storage controller is one of the most important parts of a Proxmox VE server. This article lists some good working hardware raid controllers and some information about the used configurations. If you wonder how to figure out which Controller you have, log into your Proxmox server and type 'lspci' on the commandline. Then look for a line with RAID Controller or similar.

3Ware

9690SA SAS/SATA-II RAID PCIe (rev 01)

This Adapter is working well under Proxmox. Attention: make sure you have write cache enabled and use a BBU! Without write cache the vms seem to 'hang' or 'freeze' sometimes. Performance give about 50MB/s on a Raid 5 with 3 HDD's a 1TB

Management tools

debs available from http://jonas.genannt.name

install key

 wget -O - http://jonas.genannt.name/debian/jonas_genannt.pub | apt-key add -

add to /etc/apt/sources.list :

deb http://jonas.genannt.name/debian lenny restricted

install

aptitude update
aptitude install 3ware-3dm2-binary 3ware-cli-binary

start service

/etc/init.d/3dm2 start

note firefox does not display all of the screen correctly [for anyways for last 3-4 years ]. so i usually use konqueror

connect - login as admin , default password is 3ware

https://ipaddress:888

configure

Change password , allow remote access, change default port . add NAT access thru firewall. ...

Adaptec

All Adaptec controllers with BBU unit are known to perform well. If possible, take one with "Zero-Maintenance Cache Protection", e.g. Adaptec 5805Z.

Confirmed

Adaptec 2405 Controller completely working (RAID10), out of the box. But be aware, it has no possibility to extend it with an BBU (Battery Backup Unit).

Configuration

Raid 10

Management tools

See Adaptec_Storage_Manager

Areca

ARC-1210, ARC-1212 and ARC-1222 works very well with good speed

HighPoint

HighPoint 3510 - RAID 10. Works very well.

Compaq / HP

Smart Array (using in-kernel cciss driver)

• 6i
• 400i