Fwd: Recommended RAID controller

[Scott Long]

KC Somaratne wrote:
> On Fri, 07 Jan 2005 21:06:58 -0700, Scott Long <scottl at freebsd.org> wrote:
> 
>>The 2230SLP will use the 'aaccli' that can be found in the FreeBSD ports
>>tree, and can run the linux aaccli that can be found on the CD that
>>comes with the card.  I haven't done a lot of testing with this card to
>>say whether or not it's reliable, but it's definitely a candidate.
>>
>>I really don't know what I'd recommend.  The aac cards seem to be 'good
>>enough' for most people.  The amr driver is suffering from instability
>>under heavy load, unfortunately.  The ciss hardware and drivers are
>>pretty good, but are somewhat hard to get ahold of.
>>
>>Scott
> 
> 
> Hi Scott,
> 
> Thank you very much for your advice.  I still have a problem with the
> local IBM guys refusing to support the Adaptec card though. They've
> agreed to get me the information needed to help with using the
> ServeRAID card.
> 
> But looking at the man page for the ips driver absolutely scares me.
> What information do you exactly need from the IBM/Adaptec folks to get
> the ips driver and the Linux management apps to work to a descent
> level. Let me know and I'll talk to them and see if I can help you to
> get that information.

I talked with some ServeRAID engineers about this a few years back,
and it seems that the linux apps assume that the arrays are presented 
from the OS as SCSI devices that are conduits for the apps to
communicate to the ips firmware with custom SCSI commands.  Linux apps
that use the Linux 'sg' API (and I use that term quite loosely in this
case) to send SCSI commands are not portable at all to FreeBSD. The
FreeBSD ips driver also is a block driver, not a SCSI driver, so even if
the apps could be made portable, the driver would have to be re-written.
Compare this to the aac architecture that uses common, portable ioctls
to communicate between userland and the firmware; this makes it trivial
to run the linux apps on FreeBSD.

Also, remember that IBM sold their ServeRAID business to Adaptec a few 
years ago.  While you might be talking to IBM reps about FreeBSD 
support, all that they can do is go to Adaptec and relay the message.
Adaptec has had very little interest over the years in supporting
FreeBSD, and what support there is only exists because of several people
who no longer work there (myself included).

Scott