PERC3/Di replacement

[jason andrade]

On Sun, 18 Apr 2004, Adam Williams wrote:

> I had this same problem on a poweredge 2500.  It seems to happen with
> people that use RAID 0 on it.  have you tried RAID 1 or 5?  The only
> solution I know of is to disable the 3/di and replace it with a PERC3/DC
> (LSI logic megaraid card) but that will cost around $1000.

perhaps only if you buy it new from dell (but even then that
price above seems excessive).  you could source these used/refurbished.

> >I got a Dell 2650 (running RedHat AS3) where the PERC3/Di locks up
> >regularly, mostly during backup at night.

have you updated the perc firmware ? the system firmware ?

> >As far as I can discover the problem with PERC3/Di lockups is well known
> >but no solution is in sight. The question then becomes: What other Dell
> >RAID controller is OK a replacement?
> >
> >It seems that the 2650 is sold with a number of different RAID controllers:
> >
> >PERC 3/Di
> >PERC 4/DC
> >PERC 3/QC
> >
> >Does anyone know if the PERC 4/DC or the PERC 3/QC have the same problems
> >as the PERC 3/Di?

the perc3/di is adaptec based, the /D,Q{C} cards are LSI (AMI) based.  they
don't have the same problems as the build in perc3/di.

> >Another alternative is software RAID perhaps.

which is increasingly what a number of people are doing (myself included).
it depends on your environment though.. hardware raid offers certain benefits
you'd want to consider.

regards,

-jason