Adaptec management tools

[Charles Sprickman]

Hi,

I think we have a few Adaptec people here...

Having been bit in the ass by "raidutil" in the past (if there's one app 
I'd like to see with a "Are you sure? (y/n)" dialogue, it's that one) I'm 
wondering what the other options are.

Some background...  I'm working with about a dozen boxes that have some 
flavor or Adaptec RAID controller.  It seems that we are reaching a point 
where more and more drives are reaching the end of their useful lives. 
This means that I'm having to use the management tools more often.  So far 
even just replacing a failed drive is a pain:

-yank old drive
-mount new drive in carrier and install
-reboot
-enter SMOR
-fiddle with interface until it's convinced to rebuild onto new drive
-hope for the best :)

I would really like to avoid the reboot step, there's no reason for it 
other than to get to that BIOS screen.  I do not want to install X on 
these servers to run the full GUI.  I simply will not trust "raidutil" 
until I see Adaptec post some more detailed documentation, specifically in 
a "HOWTO" format.  I don't like parsing dense docs when in a panic (who 
really does?).

There's also quite a disconnect between the paper docs packaged with the 
units (mostly ZCR units in SuperMicro SuperServers).  There's instructions 
for a program that I don't think even exists for FreeBSD (Storage Manager 
Pro?), yet that's what they suggest.

I could possibly stomach an X app if I could connect to it remotely. 
There are hints of this in the manuals, but I don't see any such thing in 
the asr-utils package.

For the Adaptec folks:  Is there anything you can do to get more 
information online?  Will there be any updates to existing tools (RAIDUTIL 
Version: 3.04  Date: 9/27/2000 - 5 years old)?  Will there be a way to 
config in a GUI without X libs on the server anytime soon?

For the FreeBSD folks:  What are you using?  Do you trust the tools you 
can find?  Are you using something besides Adaptec for hardware RAID?  If 
so, how do you like it?  What are the management tools like?  Does it tend 
to randomly mark drives as "bad" for no apparent reason then later decide 
they are indeed "good"?

I'm ranting because Adaptec support has been next to useless.  All total 
over the last few years I've installed more than two dozen Adaptec RAID 
products on FreeBSD and I'm struggling to understand why I should 
continue.  Don't get me wrong, the asr driver "just works", but the 
management is opaque at best, dangerous at worst.

Thanks,

Charles