From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Oct 5 13:47:24 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E62C516A403 for ; Thu, 5 Oct 2006 13:47:24 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jbell@stelesys.com) Received: from stelesys.com (web3.stelesys.com [63.175.100.43]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8266F43D45 for ; Thu, 5 Oct 2006 13:47:24 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from jbell@stelesys.com) Received: from [127.0.0.1] (helo=www.stelesys.com) by stelesys.com with esmtpa (Exim 4.63 (FreeBSD)) (envelope-from ) id 1GVRHb-000A5B-9k for freebsd-current@freebsd.org; Thu, 05 Oct 2006 07:20:55 -0400 Received: from 209.134.164.20 (SquirrelMail authenticated user jbell@stelesys.com) by www.stelesys.com with HTTP; Thu, 5 Oct 2006 07:20:55 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <2393.209.134.164.20.1160047255.squirrel@www.stelesys.com> In-Reply-To: <45249B34.20901@samsco.org> References: <200610050459.k954xMEv073389@ambrisko.com> <45249B34.20901@samsco.org> Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2006 07:20:55 -0400 (EDT) From: "Jerry Bell" To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org User-Agent: SquirrelMail/1.4.6-rc1 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Importance: Normal Subject: Re: 6.2-BETA2 Dell PE1950 X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 05 Oct 2006 13:47:25 -0000 > The confusion is actually on Dell's end. They've overloaded the 'PERC' > term to mean both software and hardware RAID. You can build out a > 1950 or 2950 with an MPT SAS card instead of an MFI SAS-RAID card, but > they will still tell you that you are getting 'PERC RAID'. The power > of marketeers. Anyways, I _think_ that the 'i' in 'PERC 5i' is the > indicator that it is software RAID, and thus just an MPT chip doing > its 'integrated mirror' feature. I've spent some quality time on this well Dell in the past 2 weeks. The SAS card is called SAS5i, and the "i" in PERC 5i and SAS5i means "internal". They also have a PERC 5E which has external SAS ports. The "i" cards are typically integrated, mounted up near the array shelf, where the "e" cards go in the pci-e slot. I'm not aware of an option to configure a Dell server through Dell's site with RAID using the SAS5i card. I got a sweet deal on a refurb 2950 without raid, and trying to convert it to raid has been fun. Jerry