AMCC Storage 3ware 9690SA SAS/SATA RAID Controller
Linux Test Results
For the sake of completion, I tested Ubuntu Server LTS briefly. I found that the Linux 2.6 kernel already had full driver support for the card which was really nice. Here is the rundown from the IO Zone benchmarks that I ran. As before, higher is better. Areas that are completely flat and on the bottom were not tested.
From these tests, we can see that the performance of this controller card on Ubuntu Server LTS is extremely good. Not only are the transfer rates faster than those of either Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008, the surfaces are flater which means that performance will be consistant. IO Zone is the only benchmark that I know of that would run on both Windows and Linux, and these results are posted for general performance comparison only.
Further Tests
DataMarck 0.04 Test
| Windows Vista Ultimate Service Pack 1 |
Windows Server 2008 |
 |
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Datamarck is a good benchmark tool that gives us a general idea of how fast the RAID array is over its entire length. It measures two variables, response time in milliseconds and bandwidth in megabytes per second. Lower response times mean that the disk will perform better for all types of access, so lower is better. More bandwidth means that more data can be transfered to the disk in the same amount of time, so higher is better. As we can see from these benchmarks, Windows Server 2008 has a clear edge on Windows Vista. While the latency is very low, Windows Server 2008 dominates the bandwidth test.
HD Tune
| Windows Vista Ultimate Service Pack 1 |
Windows Server 2008 |
 |
 |
HD Tune is a benchmark that, much like Datamarck, shows the performance of the array over its entire length. This gives us an idea of how well the controller card is managing read and write data caches as well as how fast the disks are. As before, higher bandwidth is better, and lower access times are better. One addition to this test is the burst rate, the burst rate is the fastest sustained rate of data transfer that can be expected. This is calculated based on the performance data from the entire test. Notice that while the burst rate is the same, Windows Server 2008 again smashes Vista in the bandwidth category. With an average access time of just over 5.8 ms, latency is not a factor in either of these benchmarks.
REAL TIME PRICING
