Hello!
I'm happy to see that it could work with the newest 7.0-STABLE tree because I
don't want to buy a new NIC which works with FreeBSD.
Be aware that Realtek NICs have a history of being incredibly buggy and
having very odd engineering design flaws. I go to great lengths to
avoid them on motherboards; I agree an OS should work with it, but based
on the pain I've seen Yong-Hyeon (driver maintainer) go through when it
comes to hardware revisions or general oddities, I often cringe at the
idea of using a Realtek NIC in any environment I have control over.
(I've blogged about how Realtek more or less dominates the consumer
market with their NIC/PHYs, which is quite scary considering the bugs
even in their Windows drivers.)
I am very, very thankful we have an active rl(4) and re(4) driver
maintainer, though. :-)
I know that there are better NICs (in the past I had some from Intel)
but the system is only for personal use and I don't need a "optimal
working" Ethernet network, so the onboard RTL NICs should be enough for
my purposes...
I use FreeBSD for 90%
(for some years now) and therefore I also bought a 3ware 8006-2LP Hardware-
RAID controller and will buy a second HighPoint 3120 HW-RAID controller (which
is less expensive) because I had bad experiences with the Fake- (or
Pseudo-)RAID controllers like the "normal" onboard controllers and others
(Promise FastTrak 4310 etc.).
I have a tendency to like Intel (and occasionally nVidia, but highly
prefer Intel) ICH controllers simply because Intel has fantastic product
errata, and the ICH controllers have performed quite well over the
years. They're also used on server hardware (read: Supermicro).
But in this day and age, one of the best SATA controllers for FreeBSD is
an Areca controller. They're somewhat expensive (comparatively), but
the performance is apparently stunning, combined with decent FreeBSD
drivers that utilise CAM and da(4) (yes, despite the disks being SATA).
Every time people mention them on the lists, the response is the same:
amazing performance, and really good driver + administrative support
(e.g. software administrative utilities).
I do wish Areca made a less expensive controller with less features,
intended for "tech-savvy" consumer use, in the US$125 or less price
range.
I've read about the Areca (aka Tekram?) controllers and the good support
by FreeBSD but as I told you, I have a 3ware controller and I'me _very_
happy with it. But now I need a second one (with PCIe x1 and two SATA
ports) for RAID1 because it seems as if the RAID-functionallity of my
onboard ICH9R controller isn't supported by FreeBSD and Linux but I want
to do further testing...
I've looked for such an Areca HW-RAID controller some days ago because
of my bad experiences with the Fake-RAID controllers in the past and
I've found the new Areca ARC-1200:
http://www.areca.com.tw/products/2ports.htm
but here in Germany it's with ~140EUR even more expensive than the 3ware
9650SE-2LP which is listed for ~130EUR:
http://www.3ware.com/products/serial_ata2-9650.asp
Then I've seen that HighPoint doesn't produce only cheap Fake-RAID cards
but also the HighPoint RocketRAID 3120 HW-RAID controller which is
listed for only ~100EUR and which ostensibly has a good Linux/FreeBSD
support.
If I will not be able to get the ICH9R working stable with FreeBSD and
Linux, then I will buy the HighPoint 3120. If it works good and I have
the time then I'll benchmark it against the 3ware 8006-2LP under FreeBSD...
Now I also have troubles with FreeBSD and the ICH9R SATA-controller
and it's RAID functionality.
I'm not surprised. FreeBSD's Intel MatrixRAID support is very
dangerous, I would not recommend using it if your data matters. There
are a few PRs which contain patches that address some of the concerns,
but out-of-the-box, I'd recommend avoiding Intel MatrixRAID on FreeBSD.
Then I can save my time... :-)
Thanks for your answer with all information!
Regards,
Lukas
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