认识一下这对双胞胎

认识一下这对双胞胎

Neil Cameron

      Adaptec by PMC的“Q”卡已经存在了若干年，并有若干变种，我们有些忠实客户对该产品系列评价颇高。故而，我感到是时候对PMC推出的两块最新的、也可以说最有用的双胞胎“Q”卡做一番介绍……我的用词当然并不会在任何意义上改变产品的官方命名——这只是为了便于称呼，我个人的发明而已。

      这两块卡是：Qi 和Qie。

      它们当然并不是我的中国表亲，而其实分别指的是81605ZQ和8885Q卡。

      Qi =81605ZQ

      Qie =8885Q

      那这些名字从何而来呢？根本原因是我们澳大利亚人习惯了给所有东西起外号。我个人的这个毛病更是根深蒂固，乃至于我经常忘掉了旁人的真名，而单记得他们的绰号。这可能导致很多尴尬的局面，因为我给有些人/物起的诨名本来绝不应该让本人听到的。

      再回到我们的主题上来。其实，我认为大家应该认真考虑购置的唯二的两块”Q”卡就是这两块8系列的产品。价格上来讲很适宜，性能上来看也很够用，功能上也恰到好处。干脆点说，依鄙人的愚见，这两块卡是“Q“卡中唯二之选。现在来看看我是怎么推出这个结论的……

      Qi（其中的“i“代表“内置”，因此”e“当然代表的就是”外置“）。如果你的目的在于改善服务器内置硬盘上的存储系统的性能，那么，这张卡就能满足所有需求。如果你的服务器有8个盘位，可以将其布满大容量的硬盘。SSD则可以安放在服务器中几乎任何地方……现在甚至有适配器可以把SSD放在超薄的留给CDROM的空位上（现在可以直接从USB盘来安装操作系统，CDROM驱动器已经不再需要，因此服务器上原来用于插放CDROM的插口就闲置了）。所以，基本上可以把这块卡当作一个可以连接10块硬盘的阵列卡（8块可以热插拔的HDD 加上可以安置在服务器中任何地方的1到2块SSD ）。

     自然地，如果你的服务器有16个盘位，这块卡也可以直接处理16块之多的硬盘。所以，为什么要在意控制卡能支持的端口数目比当前的需要高呢？——只要价格/性能/功能的组合合乎理想。

      如果在服务器外部还连接了JBOD，那么Qie就是理想之选。Qie让你可以如天马行空般配置系统，比如在服务器中塞满SSD，再在JBOD中连接上很多很多的HDD……有了这块卡，基本上可以无限制地任意按照缓存或分层的需求来组合硬盘。

     所以，来好好认识一下我们的双胞胎产品……Qi和Qie。说老实话，要卷起舌头飞快地念出81605ZQ/8885Q这两个名字，已经让我无比苦恼了。Qi/Qie念起来要轻松得多。

  

Meet the twins …(or the world according to Neil)

     Adaptec“Q” cards have been around in a few variants for quite a few years now, and we have quite a few devotee customers who think this technology is the ducks guts. So I think it’s time to introduce our two newest, and only required, “Q” twins… this of course doesn’t change our official card names in any way shape or form – it’s just my personal way of naming things for easy reference…

     No,they are not my Chinese cousins, they are in fact the 81605ZQ and 8885Q cards respectively.

     Qi =81605ZQ

     Qie =8885Q

     So why the names? Basically because I’m Australian and we tend to give nicknames to everything. In fact I’m so bad at this that I have a habit of forgetting people’s real names and only remembering their nicknames. This can get embarrassing because some of the nicknames I give people and things should never be repeated to those individuals

     Anyway,back to the subject. In reality I believe the only two “Q” cards you need to consider are these two 8 series products. Pricing wise they are the right cards to buy. Performance wise they are the right cards to buy. Feature wise they are the right cards to buy. In fact, imho they are the only “Q” cards you need to consider. So let’s look at my logic …

      Qi (the “i” stands for “internal” and therefore of course the “e” stands for “external”). If you are looking to improve the performance of your storage system on drives internal to theserver, then this card fulfills all your requirements.

      If you have an 8-bay server then fill it up with big hard drives. You can fit SSDs just about anywhere in your server …there are even adapters that let you put ssds into the place of slimline CDROMs (which are not required any more in servers as you can install your OS from USBstick). (which are not required any more in servers as you can install your OS from USB stick). So basically you can treat the card as a 10-drive adapter (8 xhdd in hot swap and 1 or 2 SSD anywhere in the server).

     Ofcourse, if you have a 16-bay server then this card can also cope with that many drives directly. So who cares if it has more ports than you need – the price/performance/function is right.

     If you are going outside the server to JBODs then the Qie is the right card as it lets you do such crazy things as fill your head unit up with SSD, and attach lots and lots of HDD in the JBODs … the drive combinations for your caching ortiering requirements are pretty much endless with this card.

     So meetthe twin … Qi and Qie … they are worth getting to know. In reality I’m sick oftrying to roll 81605ZQ/8885Q quickly off the tongue … Qi/Qie is much easier tosay

      …

      As anaside, Australian’s have a weird sense of humour (and spell using the Queen’sEnglish, which this spell-checker is having problems with). We tend to speak to one another in derogatory terms and use nicknames/slang to the point where most people don’t understand a word we are saying. So, to the American lad (won’t use the Australian slang for Americans here as it can be construed in way too many ways), I’ll have this to say:

    “Australia and America are two countries separated by a common language!”