From owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jun 22 18:32:14 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 546AC16A4D4 for ; Thu, 22 Jun 2006 18:32:14 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from lavalamp@spiritual-machines.org) Received: from mail.digitalfreaks.org (arbitor.digitalfreaks.org [216.151.95.158]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DFCBA43D45 for ; Thu, 22 Jun 2006 18:32:13 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from lavalamp@spiritual-machines.org) Received: by mail.digitalfreaks.org (Postfix, from userid 1022) id E521317118; Thu, 22 Jun 2006 14:32:15 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mail.digitalfreaks.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E40D01710A for ; Thu, 22 Jun 2006 14:32:15 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2006 14:32:15 -0400 (EDT) From: "Brian A. Seklecki" X-X-Sender: lavalamp@arbitor.digitalfreaks.org To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Message-ID: <20060622143136.S11292@arbitor.digitalfreaks.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Subject: PERC 5/E SAS RAID in Dell PowerEdge 1950/2950 X-BeenThere: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: General discussion of FreeBSD hardware List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2006 18:32:14 -0000 repost from freebsd-questions@ (no help there) ~BAS --- All: Does anyone have details about the new PERC 5/E SAS RAID controller Dell is (or will soon be) shipping in the 1950/2950? This replaces the long standing PERC4 (which was an OEM LSI / AMI MegaRAID U320) in the [1,2]850 series. Obviously this is an OEM chipset as well. I see it listed in mfi(4). It appears to be backported into RELENG_6. It appears to be an OEM of the HBA ASIC on the LSI Logic products: -MegaRAID SAS 8408E -MegaRAID SAS 8308ELP -MegaRAID SAS 8344ELP -MegaRAID SAS 8408E -MegaRAID SAS 8480E Do we know if ports/sysutils/megarc supports /dev/fmi? The Linux drivers for SUSE/RHEL seems to suggest that the new driver is simply an extension to the existing one, so it seems likely the management interface is the same. I see LSI lists a separate CLI: http://lsi.com/files/support/rsa/MR_SAS_1.0_1.00.07-Linux-MegaCLI.txt http://lsi.com/files/support/rsa/MR_SAS_1.0_1.00.07-Linux-MegaCLI.zip Which is different from where we get the MegaRC "Beta": http://www.lsilogic.com/files/support/rsa/beta/drivers/ (no directory listing support) There were some posts in April that suggested Linux Binary emulation and linux compat "sysfs" or "linprocfs" would be needed instead of a native source code port. I think it's safe to say most people will be disinclined to enable Linux binary emulation on production servers. The controller is pretty much useless without a management CLI. Plus, the last I heard from Dell, there was no chance of integrating RAID management with any out-of-band management API (IPMI,BMC, SNMP, etc.) Also, anyone who may have worked with an 1950/2950 demo unit or non-OEM LSILogic card: has the BIOS menu usability and/or general intelligence of the card has improved? For example, with the PERC 4/e you could pull a component out of a RAID1, power on the system, and the RAID controller would scan the SCSI bus and report all volumes a healthy. TIA, ~BAS