INTRODUCTION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   When i first started using and testing SAS equipment several years ago the SAS standard wasn't really popular amongst non-professionals and so almost all of the available solutions back then were considered enterprise grade because of their somewhat high cost, wealth of features and performance levels. Fast forward a few years in the future and right now there are even consumer oriented mainboards that feature entry-level onboard SAS controllers in an effort to cover consumers who are not after the extra features and performance offered by mid and high-end add-on cards. Now as some of you know last year we paired the latest LSI MegaRAID 9265-8i 6Gb/s 8 port SATA+SAS RAID Controller and its main counterpart manufactured by ARECA the ARC-1882i 8 Port 6Gb/s SAS/SATA RAID Adapter with a total of 8 Kingston HyperX 120GB SATA III SSDs to see just which solutions offered the best bang for your buck and in the end both produced impressive results. Well today we are placing both cards against one of the latest mid-end SAS/SATA RAID controllers to hit the market by LSI, the MegaRAID 9271-8i 6Gb/s 8 port SATA+SAS RAID Controller to see if LSI has brought anything new to the table.

 

   LSI Corporation (NASDAQ: LSI) designs semiconductors and software that accelerate storage and networking in datacenters, mobile networks and client computing. Our technology is the intelligence critical to enhanced application performance, and is applied in solutions created in collaboration with our partners. More information is available at www.lsi.com.

 

   We've been using the MegaRAID 9265-8i since we finished our comparison early last year so when LSI announced the 9271-8i model we were quite curious as to what they did to improve on its very successful predecessor. Well at first glance it doesn't really seem that they did much since specs-wise the 9265-8i is almost identical to the 9271-8i since they both use the LSISAS2208 Dual-Core RAID on Chip (800MHz ROC PowerPC) paired with 1GB 1333MHz ECC DDRIII SDRAM, are 6Gb/s compatible, can support Up to 128 SAS and/or SATA devices, feature 2 Mini-SAS SFF8087 internal side connectors and use a single x8 PCI Express slot (they even share the same MTBF of 1.031.514 hours). However there's but one important difference and so the latest 9271-8i model is PCI Express 3.0 compatible as opposed to the PCI Express 2.0 compatible 9265-8i. Now as far as i know the LSISAS2208 Dual Core RAID on Chip supports PCIex 2.0 natively so i doubt we will see any significant difference with PCIex 3.0 but that's what we're here to find out so let’s do that.

 

 

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PACKAGING AND CONTENTS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LSI still uses the same box as two years ago so at the front we see a large product image and the model name along with the company logo and its main uses as small boxes at the lower end.

 

 

The features of the card along with the barcode are placed on the left side.

 

 

Over at the right side we see the specifications list along with a list of management programs and a list of the system requirements.

 

 

A description of the card some words about the management software suite and contact/warranty information about LSI are placed at the rear.

 

 

As usual the card is stuck inside a piece of cardboard with the rest of the bundle placed beneath it.

 

 

Inside the box you will find the 9271-8i SAS/SATA RAID card, low profile PCI bracket (for use with rackmount servers and mATX/mITX cases), software CD, quick installation guide, driver information, warning paper and instructions on how to replace the stock PCI bracket with the low profile one.

 

 

THE MEGARAID 9271-8I

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The MegaRAID 9271-8i doesn't use an extra PCB for its cache like the 9265-8i did so it's not only smaller and thus can be installed easier but should also be quite cooler.

 

 

A large silver aluminum heatsink is placed almost at the center of the card.

 

 

The optional CacheVault Accessory kit (Lithium-ION battery backup alternative by LSI) gets plugged into this port. The CacheVault Technology basically copies cached data from the DRAM cache to the Flash in the event of a power or server failure and keeps it there until it comes back online at which point it restores them back to the DRAM cache.

 

 

Under the large heatsink we once again find the LSI2208 RAID controller by LSI featuring support for both SAS 2 and SATA III at 6.0Gb/s.

 

 

Unlike the 9265-8 the 9271-8i has two 4-port Mini-SAS SFF8087 internal connectors facing on the interior (side) something which is especially useful for rackmount servers (for us it's a lot more convenient compared to vertical ones regardless of case type).

 

 

Both the standard and low-profile brackets are perforated to allow hot air to exit the interior faster.

 

 

Here we have the lineup for this review from the quite old MegaRAID 9260-4i, 9265-8i, Areca ARC-1882i and up to the latest 9271-8i.

 

 

MEGARAID STORAGE MANAGER

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prior to actually using your drives with the card you should head onto the official LSI support page to download both the latest firmware version and the latest MegaRAID Storage Manager Control software.

 

 

The MegaRAID Storage Manager is very easy to install and use, just choose the appropriate installation package, log into the software and you are good to go.

 

 

From within the MegaRAID Storage Manager you can also check the available/valid software packages and activate new ones as well.

 

 

You can adjust most options regarding the card itself from the Physical tab while the drive settings can be accessed from the logical tab. Remember that by default the drives are not configured for maximum performance something which you can do especially if you have either the CacheVault or Battery kits to prevent data loss in case of a power/system failure.

 

 

TEST BED

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TESTING METHODOLOGY

 

   For this review we will keep things very simple since last time many of you asked us to include single SAS HDD tests since not everyone can obviously afford to have 8 SSDs in RAID0/1 configurations. Now normally when someone spends this kind of money to get an extra SAS/SATA card 8 SSDs shouldn't be something hard to get (especially with all the recent price drops) but the good thing with single drive tests is that if you can see a difference there then you will certainly see much more with several drives in RAID arrays. So this time we will be testing all 4 cards in single mode using one Seagate SAVVIO 10K.5 900GB SAS 2 6Gb/s hard disk drive (the fastest mechanical drive we have at hand). As expected we installed the latest firmware update on all 4 cards and used the latest drivers. Once again we used our standard selection of benchmark suites (tweaked as usual for SAS testing so we will not get unrealistic results) such as the HD Tach RW (Long Bench 32mb Zones), HD Tune Pro (read/write -when possible- speeds), Sisoftware Sandra Pro (Read/Write -also when possible- speeds), AIDA64 (Linear Read/Random Read), Crystal Disk Mark x64 (1000MB read/write speeds), ATTO 2.46 (2GB Length, Max Read/Max Write speeds), IOmeter (256k Random Read/Writes) and PCMARK 7. Each test was repeated a total of 6 times and after that the average (not peak) performance numbers were recorded into our charts. As always every test was performed in a fresh installation of Microsoft Windows 7 Service Pack 1 with every update installed up to November 15th 2013.

 

 

TEST RESULTS - AIDA64 / ATTO

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TEST RESULTS - HD TACH RW / HD TUNE PRO

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TEST RESULTS - SISOFTWARE SANDRA PRO / CRYSTAL DISK MARK

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TEST RESULTS - IOMETER / PCMARK 7

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONCLUSION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   Some of you may wonder why we decided to test the MegaRAID 9271-8i an 6Gb/s solution instead of shifting our focus in testing the latest 12Gb/s SAS/SATA RAID controllers and the answer is actually very simple. You see aside the fact that the available 12Gb/s cards and drives out there are the very first attempts/models and thus performance will get a lot better sooner rather than later there's also the price issue and so currently such solutions are quite a bit more expensive than 6Gb/s ones (especially the drives) and certainly not suited for regular consumers. Naturally we will focus in 12Gb/s solutions quite soon but for now we just wanted to show that a very good 6Gb/s SATA/SAS RAID controller still packs quite a punch. Back to our review it's been over a year since we tested the MegaRAID 9265-8i 6Gb/s 8 port SATA+SAS RAID Controller so when we finally received the 9271-8i model several months ago we had very high expectations from it. Well after wrapping up all of our tests I’m sure it's very easy to see that although the 9271-8i outperformed the competition in most tests its performance didn't really blow us away. Certainly since both the 9265-8 and the 9271-8i use the same LSISAS2208 Dual-Core RAID on Chip (800MHz PowerPC) and the same 1GB 1333MHz ECC DDRIII SDRAM we didn’t expect miracles. On the other hand however keep in mind that if a card can perform so much better than others in single drive mode then in RAID configurations that gap will only grow larger. That being said perhaps what i personally liked most with the new 9271-8i was the lack of an extra PCB for extra cache something which should keep the card cooler and help avoid any overheating issues.

 

   Enterprise-grade devices never come cheap but they do offer more in terms of performance, features and reliability and so with a current price tag set at USD532.99 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and 530Euros inside the EU (Amazon.co.uk) as we speak the latest LSI MegaRAID 9271-8i 6Gb/s 8 port SATA+SAS RAID Controller is certainly not ment for everyone. However for professionals who are not yet willing to take the large step towards 12Gb/s solutions either because the standard is still fresh and expensive or because they already happen to have 6Gb/s drives the 9271-8i is a very powerful option with many features and the level of quality and support only LSI can offer. Because of all of the above we think it's only natural for the LSI MegaRAID 9271-8i 6Gb/s 8 port SATA+SAS RAID Controller to walk away with our Platinum Award.

PROS

- Quality
- PCIe 8x 3.0
- Excellent Performance
- Dual SFF8087 Internal Side Connectors (8 ports)
- Up To 128 Drives (Via Expander)
- Low Profile
- SATA+SAS 6Gb/s
- RAID 0/1/5/6/10/50/60
- Support For Cascade Pro and Fastpath Software
- Support For CacheVault Kit 

 

CONS

- Price (For Some)