Which SCSI card?

bloodiedathame

bloodiedathame

bloodiedathame

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I have an HP Z800 at work and an EonStor SCSI-320 8-bay RAID setup that I want to hook it up to.

I'm guessing a PCIe SCSI card is what I need, but are the ones I've found all the same, or do I need something specific for the RAID drive?

I don't deal with PC hardware much any more, and I have never ventured into the world of SCSI.

Thanks!
 
The recommended part from here:
http://www.nexstor.co.uk/prod_pdfs/SCSI-320 to SCSI-320 2U12-bay RAID - U12U-G4020.pdf
is the IFT-82U40GD4 which isn't really available any more.

Your alternatives are:
29320LPE (1 channel, PCI-E 1x) from Adaptec
or
LSI 22320SE (2 channel, PCI-E 4x) / LSI 20320IE (1 channel, PCI-E 4x) from LSI

Intel also offer rebranded RAID controllers, so you might want to look for 'Intel SCSI-320' and see what turns up, might get a bargain.

Let us know how you get on :)
 
Thanks for that, your link led me to look for the document for the model we have which is this: http://www.nexstor.co.uk/prod_pdfs/SCSI-320%20to%20SATA-II%208-bay%20Cube%20RAID%20-%20A08U-C2411%20(MassCube-I).pdf

It lists the card I need as a SCSI to SATA RAID controller, rather than SCSI to SCSI RAID. Is this the same thing?

Also is there any difference between x1 and x4 cards, I'm not sure the PC has an x1 slot but it does have an x4, so would an x1 card work in an x4 slot? PCI slots are a pain, PCI, PCIX, PCIe, Gen 1, Gen 2. I mean seriously what the hell kind of branding is that?! Our Z 800 has PCI Express Gen 1 and Gen 2 slots, whatever that means... So I can use PCIX or PCIe?

I'm guessing by your answer that any card with the correct slot and offering some sort of RAID control will be fine really?
 
Last edited:
Ah, sorry I didn't get the right product.
bloodiedathame said:
It lists the card I need as a SCSI to SATA RAID controller, rather than SCSI to SCSI RAID. Is this the same thing?
Click to expand...
To my eye, that looks like something which is embedded in the device, interfacing SCSI-320 with SATA-II which I presume your drives are?

If that is the case, it doesn't change anything. The external interface to the box is still SCSI-320 (VHDCI).

1x PCI-E v1 cards have 250MB/s bandwidth in both directions. If throughput isn't paramount, then this will be sufficient (although it is a bottleneck for SCSI-320). 1x PCI-E v2 and v3 can transport 500MB/s and 1GB/s respectively.
4x cards have enough bandwidth regardless in this situation.

A 1x PCI-E slot will not take a 4x PCI-E card.
A 4x PCI-E slot will take a 1x PCI-E card.
A 16x PCI-E slot will take any size of PCI-E card.

PCI-X is not preferred, although this depends on driver support / RAID cards which are compatible with the Cube RAID box.

bloodiedathame said:
I'm guessing by your answer that any card with the correct slot and offering some sort of RAID control will be fine really?
Click to expand...
Yes, although it might be worth sending the manufacturers an email to see if they recommend any cards.
 
Yes I think so, the physical cable is SCSI-SCSI, but the drives inside are in SATA RAID, in which case the LSI and Adaptec both should work.

So a PCIE 4x card is the way forward.

Have sent them off an email, will let you know if they reply.

Thanks again for your help!
 
Update. Finally after a power supply fail, drive fail and loss of a weeks work I have managed to get round to hooking the RAID up to the Windows 7 workstation. I configured the drives, volumes, lun and RAID5 via the designated Eonstor software Raidwatch, and I can see a 5.5TB drive in Disc Management.

However when I come to format the drives (NTFS) I can't seem to do it through the Windows Disc Management GUI or through DOS diskpart. I did manage to mount the drive, so it shows up as RAW and GPT. However if I try and do anything with the drive, DM becomes unresponsive as does diskpart (even changing the path (F:/ -> H:/))

I noticed an IO error in one message after a failed format which suggests maybe a problem with the SCSI card. The second attempt I had the error message that pointed to a Remote Procedure Call problem... can't remember the error itself but Google was unhelpful.

Any ideas?
 
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