Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 10:53:09 -0500 (EST) From: Tom Daly <tom@dyndns.com> To: freebsd-scsi@freebsd.org Subject: Suggested RAID cards for FreeBSD 5-RELEASE and 6-RELEASE Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.63.0602031036000.36769@manganese.bos.dyndns.org>
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Hi, This seems to be an often posted topic on this list, however, its seems everyone's milage tends to vary. My inquiry: We are trying to validate a hardware platform for our server farms. Our goal is to locate a server/RAID controller pair that satisfy's the following requirements: Provides RAID levels 0, 1, and 10. Provides for management via BIOS over Serial Console Redirect Provides for management via OS CLI or GUI (but no X-Windows, should be able to run through a standard shell) Provides logging ability for events to syslog, e-mail, or logfile Our last successful deployment was using the Intel SE7501WV2 Motherboard, with the Intel SRCZCR RAID controller. However, Intel has discontinued both of these projects. In our testing, we've tried the following, and come up with these results: Dell PowerEdge 2850 with Dell PERC4e/Di: Provides required RAID levels Management via BIOS over serial mostly works Management via OS (MegaRC) seems broken Logging (MegaMon) works Both of the programs MegaRC and MegaMon http://people.freebsd.org/~emoore/MegaRAID_SCSI/ Dell PowerEdge 2850 with Adaptec 2130SLP Provides required RAID levels Management via BIOS over serial works Management via aaccli works Logging could be accomplished with aaccli and script files, but I see nothing to directly accomplish this. Intel SR7520JR2 with Intel SRCS16 (SATA) Provides required RAID levels Management via BIOS over serial is not possible No OS Tools found for logging or management Any of the Intel software stack 2 cards would appear to have this problem. We're considering a trial of the 3ware cards. Thier software support appears to be pretty good, however, I'm concerned about this recent post to this list: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-scsi/2006-January/002203.html The Dell 2850 seems to have a slew of other problems, namely with memory and such, but it still seems like a viable candidate. Does anyone have any stellar FreeBSD + Hardware RAID success stories, somewhat akin to my Intel WV2 + SRCZCR experience? In the Fourth Quarter 2005 FreeBSD Status Report, a section titled "LSI MegaRAID improvements" was included. Does anyone know if this includes the rebranded OEM/Dell controllers? Furthermore, has anyone gotten the LSI-provided management apps to run, as stated in the article? Are they native apps, or must they be run under linux compat mode? Thanks for your input, Tom Daly -- Thomas J. Daly tom@dyndns.com Dynamic Network Services, Inc. http://www.dyndns.com/
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