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I seldom if ever write reviews on products; but, I do consider others reviews to help formulate my buying decisions, so I decided to write a review on this particular component, to give back something to the community that might be helpful for them.
For anyone that has been around the industry for awhile, you know the name Adaptec; they OEM a lot of top tier RAID products for other manufacturers, such as IBM, DELL, HP. In my opinion, they make one of the best RAID cards around.
This is my first high-end SAS/SATA card; but I have used several of their other RAID/SCSI products in the past, as well as others from LSI.
I will break the review down into PROS and CONS and a final summary.
PROS:
-Really excellent product packaging
-ZMM (read that as no need for a battery backup module)
-Excellent support for Linux, in my case, Ubuntu.
-Extremely fast; considering I am using a RAID 6 configuration; no complaints there at all.
-Very prompt, friendly and knowledgeable support staff when you have questions.
-Better support for Ubunutu and other .deb flavored packaging is coming from Adaptec.CONS:
- I have become spoiled with web-based management of devices; so I was a little surprised when I learned that ASM (Adaptec Storage Manager) was the only option available (if you don't use CLI, exclusively). Really, I don't fault Adaptec too much for this; in doing research, it appears they did have a web-based version, but went away from it. I jumped to the inaccurate conclusion that this card had that feature, when doing the initial reviews. Most competitor cards had the feature, so I figured, Adaptec, being a top-tier RAID manufacturer would as well. I am sure they had good reasons for abandoning the web-based approach. In any event the ASM works well.
- To get the necessary "latest" supported packages, I had to do a little compiling on my own. The good news here though is, according to Support, better more current native packages for Ubuntu is forthcoming.
- Runs really warm; in my case the core is reporting 65-70 'C; but according to the ASM status, this is normal. I have very good case ventilation, but I may add an additional slot cooler to help bring that down. I have not noticed any problems with the card, or any temperature warning alarms. But, as others have mentioned, because this is a very fast card, with it comes the requisite heat :)
Once you get all of the necessary BIOS, drivers and ASM updated to current standards, the 5805z really has the ability to do some amazing things with power utilization; unfortunately, you need to make very certain the enclosure you use supports these features as well. I bought a really good enclosure, but unfortunately it does not support the spin down / power-off features of the card and hard drives purchased.
In summary, this is a serious card. It is well engineered and fast. Though I have not used all of the potential this card offers, the features I have used, have worked beyond my expectations. Adaptec Support has always been top notch, I am glad to see this has not changed. You can buy a cheaper card, but in the end, you get what you pay for. If you are serious about your data, this card is an excellent choice.
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