SCSI/RAID cards on a sparc64

[Chris Ross <cross+netbsd%distal.com@localhost>]

  Following slightly behind the conversations about disk and network  
performance, I'm realizing that the disk I/O setup in my quad U-II  
server is just too low-end.

  I have an Ultra E420, with four U-II @ 450 Mhz.  Not a very fast  
machine, but respectable.  However, I'm using the two SCSI drive bays  
for a pair of disks that I'm running RAIDframe on.  And, the disk  
performance is awful.

  I have a i386 Dell PE2650, and I have just extracted half a dozen  
(well, 7) sets of a netbsd-5 build (base, comp, games, man, misc,  
text, xbase) onto that machine in less than 5 minutes.  Where-as the  
same zcat|pax operations took nearly 30 minutes on my afore-mentioned  
Ultra-sparc.  Some of this is surely processing power, but too much of  
it IMHO is the raidframe duplication of I/O onto two 40MB/s SCSI disks.

  Does anyone have a recommendation for an U-160 card that I can put  
into my E420, or better-yet a NetBSD-configurable/control-able/ 
[monitor-able?] RAID card that I could use.  There's already a two- 
disk SCA cage in the machine, so SCSI would be easier from a hardware  
point of view, but other options could be considered, especially for  
cost reasons.

  Thanks.

                          - Chris