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I am going to build a SQL server and I need to have four independent RAID 10s. I am looking at different RAID controllers to choose from. For instance I am looking at LSI 9260-8I but I cannot figure out how many RAIDs this controller supports.

Is there even such a hard limit for a RAID controller? Does number of ports/channels of a RAID controller is related to the number of RAIDs you can create using one RAID controller?

Any help is really appreciated :>

kaptan
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If I am reading the specs correctly then the LSI 9260-8I can support.

  • up to 128 devices
  • up to 64 logical drive support

Is there even such a hard limit for a RAID controller?

Yes, there is a limit on most controllers about the number of volumes that you will be allowed to create. But on any have decent controller, it is unlikely that you would reach those limits. You will almost certainly have some requirement for redundancy meaning you need multiple controllers, or you will have insufficient I/O bandwidth from a single controller.

Given that is an 8 lane PCIe 2.0 card, and I believe you get 500 MB/s per lane, I believe that means you max out at 4 GB/s of bandwidth between that card and the system.

Zoredache
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  • tnx. that's what i thought but i wasn't sure. good point about the throughput. i also found this article that has good points about bottleneck http://www.lsi.com/downloads/Public/Direct%20Assets/LSI/Benchmark_Tips.pdf – kaptan Jun 27 '12 at 18:26