If you think getting 3ware controllers are hard in the UK - try getting them
in Australia. The only way I got mine was to get it at the Asian distributor
in Singapore when I was there on business.
I'm in the process of doing exactly the same thing as you. At the moment at
work I have 2 server machines running stress/benchmark tests - mongo.pl &
bonie++. The tests have only been running for a day but so far the 3ware
controller has died on all 3 attempts at mongo.pl (but passes bonnie++),
whereas the machine running the 2 Promise TX2 controllers has not missed a
beat. I still have quite a few more tests before I put either of them into
service but so far it looks good for the Promise controllers.
The machine's specs:
Machine #1
Athlon 1.333
ASUS A7V-133-C
256M SDRAM
5 IBM 20G (IC35L020AVER07-0 from both Thailand & Philippines from May
onwards)
2 Promise TX2 IDE controllers
Machine #2
Same as above except the 3ware controller (4 port 6000 series)
I did have problems with the Promise TX2 controllers before Kernel 2.4.7 I
had to use -ac patches to get the things to run at all. Now I'm using 2.4.9
without -ac patches. However, I have noticed a couple of lines of code
difference between the vanilla 2.4.9 and the 2.4.9-ac5 with regards to the
Promise driver. (Not sure what the differences really does yet).
It appears these days you really have to test your hardware well yourself to
be able to sleep soundly at night.
Adrian Head
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