On Tue, Aug 06, 2002 at 03:09:58PM -0400, Rick Byers wrote:
  | I'd like to use Raid 5 under NetBSD-1.5.3 for increased performance and
  | fault tollerance.  I'm looking at getting the Adaptec 2110S and using 3
  | internal 36GB drives.  However, I've had some trouble determing EXACTLY
  | what RAID hardware is supported by NetBSD.  The 1.5.3 release notes don't
  | mention ANY Adaptec cards in the "RAID Controllers" section (unless
  | they're included in "DPT SCSI Raid boards").  The aac driver manpage
  | doesn't mention the 2110S (although it does mention a 2120S - but I can't
  | find any mention of that card on the Adaptect site).  I'm thinking that
  | the dpti driver might support it, but I can't find any mention of "2110"
  | in any of the i20 source code.

The 2110S should be supported by the `iop' driver, but I'm not 100% sure
of that.  I know that the 2100S and 2400A are supported by that driver.
I believe 1.5.3 has support, and 1.6_BETA5 definately does.



  | So, can anyone provide me with their experiences using hardware RAID under
  | NetBSD?  I have to travel to another city to do this job, and it would be
  | disasterous to find out when I get there that the RAID card they ordered
  | for me won't work well in NetBSD.
  | 
  | I'd also be willing to try RaidFrame instead of a hardware RAID controller
  | as long as the performance wasn't too bad and swapping a bad drive isn't
  | too hard.

Hardware RAID using the Adaptec (rebadged DPT) cards such as the
21xxS, 2400A, and 3xxxS I2O cards works very well for me.
I have used a 2100S with SCSI, and currently use a 2400A with IDE in
my primary server, and another machine has a 3Ware 6400 with IDE
disks.  The management software of the Adaptec [23]xxx RAID cards
is quite good too; I run the Linux s/w in emulation mode.

I've also used RAIDframe on SCSI and IDE.  RAIDframe on IDE, even with
a separate primary channel (across multiple controllers) really
started to feel "sucky" with > 2 drives.  Also, it won't be possible
to get NetBSD to boot off a RAID-5 RAIDframe volume at this time.
Getting NetBSD/i386 to boot off a RAID-1 RAIDframe volume is non
trivial as well.

Contrary to other assertions made in this thread, I think that you'll
find that setting up hardware RAID-5 behind a 2110S will be really
easy; you set up the volume in the BIOS and start it initiasing. You
boot up NetBSD media which understands the card in question (e.g,
1.6_BETA5), and you're presented with a single logical disk (`ld0')
which you can create MBR partitions and a NetBSD disklabel on, and it
can be set to boot from like any other "BIOS" disk on a PC.

Luke.