3ware 9650SE on FreeBSD

Overview

As already pointed out by my other post FreeBSD Software RAID Howto i went with a hardware solution for my RAID needs. This turned out to be a 3ware 9650SE-4LPML. This post is being written upon a request to rate my experience. The time of writing this is a few months after the install and some of the details are a bit hazy.

The Purchase

I saw this controller in various places for just under $400. One place Magnum-PC sold it to me for $291. This was a good deal, but what i wasn't aware of, was that this did not include the special SATA cable for this controller. I ended up getting this for $23 incl shipping at monstronix. So all in all it was still a good deal except that i now had to wait longer and potentially paid more shipping than necessary. Oh, well. Live and learn.

The Install

This part is a bit hazy. I run this controller on FreeBSD 6 Stable which was at 6.2 at the time. FreeBSD ships with the twa drivers that go with this. There's also a 3ware package that installs a web UI to manage the controller.

The Performance

I run a RAID-5 using 4 Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6V250F0 250GB 7.2k drives which BTW get very hot. From what i remember I/O seemed to be somewhere around 110-120MB/sec. This makes me very happy considering that my old HighPoint RocketRAID 1820A 8-Channel PCI-X couldn't get past 50MB/sec in the same configuration and that includes reading. But then again this was on a PCI slot.

The Specs

This controller runs on a rather busy GigaByte GA-945GZM-S2. Here's a scanpci

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x00 function 0x00: vendor 0x8086 device 0x2770
Intel Corporation 82945G/GZ/P/PL Memory Controller Hub

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x01 function 0x00: vendor 0x8086 device 0x2771
Intel Corporation 82945G/GZ/P/PL PCI Express Root Port

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x02 function 0x00: vendor 0x8086 device 0x2772
Intel Corporation 82945G/GZ Integrated Graphics Controller

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x1c function 0x00: vendor 0x8086 device 0x27d0
Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x1d function 0x00: vendor 0x8086 device 0x27c8
Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x1d function 0x01: vendor 0x8086 device 0x27c9
Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x1d function 0x02: vendor 0x8086 device 0x27ca
Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x1d function 0x03: vendor 0x8086 device 0x27cb
Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x1d function 0x07: vendor 0x8086 device 0x27cc
Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x1e function 0x00: vendor 0x8086 device 0x244e
Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x1f function 0x00: vendor 0x8086 device 0x27b8
Intel Corporation 82801GB/GR (ICH7 Family) LPC Interface Bridge

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x1f function 0x01: vendor 0x8086 device 0x27df
Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x1f function 0x02: vendor 0x8086 device 0x27c0
Intel Corporation 82801GB/GR/GH (ICH7 Family) SATA IDE Controller

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x1f function 0x03: vendor 0x8086 device 0x27da
Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller

pci bus 0x0002 cardnum 0x00 function 0x00: vendor 0x13c1 device 0x1004
3ware Inc 9650SE SATA-II RAID

pci bus 0x0003 cardnum 0x00 function 0x00: vendor 0x8086 device 0x1229
Intel Corporation 82557/8/9 Ethernet Pro 100

pci bus 0x0003 cardnum 0x01 function 0x00: vendor 0x1186 device 0x1300
D-Link System Inc RTL8139 Ethernet

pci bus 0x0003 cardnum 0x02 function 0x00: vendor 0x1274 device 0x5880
Ensoniq 5880 AudioPCI

pci bus 0x0003 cardnum 0x05 function 0x00: vendor 0x10ec device 0x8167
Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8110SC/8169SC Gigabit Ethernet

The caveat

This controller did not play nice with my onboard Intel High Definition Audio card. It made it skip like a cd only faster. I had run into this in the past and found setting the kernel clock rate to 1000HZ fixed the problem. Well here i was running my kernel at 5000HZ to get somewhat decent sound performance during disk activity. When filing a report with 3ware they asked me to update the firmware to the latest release. This unfortunately did not fix the problem. Then they asked whether it would be possible for me to swap motherboards in an attempt to troubleshoot the problem. While i did actually have another Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R board i didn't think it would fly well with FreeBSD being as new as it was, also i didn't feel like ripping things apart again. So instead i stuck the Ensoniq 5880 AudioPCI, i think an old Sound Blaster card, in there and went on my way. This card works without hick-ups.

The Bottom Line

I am very happy with this controller and would recommend it to anyone. 3ware support, even though the problem was never solved, were ok. After all, there probably aren't too many headless FreeBSD jukeboxes with hardware RAID controllers hooked up to home stereos :)