management apps for U320 RAID controllers on 5.3

[Ken Menzel]

Hi,
  We have always used adaptec asr style controllers with asr-utils 
package and scripts written to remotely monitor the raid using the 
command line raidutil program.  We are now looking to do this with 
Ultra320 drives and FreeBSD 5.3.  Can anyone recommend a controller 
that has or will have U320 support and tools to monitor/manage the 
arrays in FreeBSD 5.x?  We have a database application, that updates 
often and needs a high speed caching RAID controller.  We have used 
RAID 10 in the past.

I was considering an Adaptec 39320A-R, it uses the 'ahd' driver but I 
can't seem to find a toolset for managing and monitoring.Will the 
LINUX "Adaptec Storage manager v2.12" RPM run under FreeBSD?   What is 
the difference between "HostRAID" and "non-HostRAID"?! I am open to 
suggestions,  I can't find much info on the Adaptec web site, except 
that FreeBSD is not a supported OS.  I am also considering one of 
Dell's PERC controllers which I assume would use the aac-cli tool set. 
I saw some-one already asked  similar questions about IBM serveRAID 
with regards to ZCR,  I am not sure it would be wise to assume all 
things to be equal with U320 controllers!

Thanks in advance for any advice on 5.3 and U320 tools!

Ken



-----------------------------------------------------
Ken Menzel  ICQ# 9325188
www.icarz.com  kenm at icarz.com