On Thu, Jan 11, 2007 at 08:22:49PM -0500, Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:
>On Thu, Jan 11, 2007 at 08:08:57PM -0500, Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:
>> On Thu, Jan 11, 2007 at 07:24:55PM -0500, George Georgalis wrote:
>> > >There are two slot types, PCI-X and PCI-E, from the spec you had 
>> > >attached, you have PCI-E (Express).
>> > >
>> > >The boards you have linked are all PCI-X.  All three look to have the 
>> > >RAID controller on the card as well.
>> 
>> I don't know whose mail you're quoting.  However, none of the SCSI or FC
>> controllers anyone recommended to you on this list (or that you mentioned
>> on this list) have "the RAID controller on the card" so I am not sure if
>> your source is trustworthy.
>
>It looks to me, reading your message more carefully, as if you've decided
>to use a U320 (parallel SCSI) RAID array.
>
>It is correct that there are almost no Ultra320 PCI-Express cards on the
>market.  I'd still urge you to consider PCI-X where you have a wealth
>of options for an Ultra320 SCSI adapter (I can make some specific
>recommendations if you want).  However, if you really want to go with
>PCI Express, you *can* use a card with an onboard RAID controller and
>simply not use the RAID portion of the card, either via SCSI pass-through
>or by configuring a single JBOD volume on the RAID card.

I think the vendor experienced issues with customers not using pass-through
and... having problems. Seems reasonable configuration to by-pass the on-card
RAID and just use the enclosure's raid volumes.

>The one that looks most likely to work with NetBSD is the LSI MegaRAID SCSI
>320-2E.  You may find a limit of 2TB on the size of any individual volume
>with this card, however (you could probably arrange to have this fixed by
>porting, or hiring someone to port, the latest version of the 'amr' driver
>from FreeBSD).

Hey! that looks pretty interesting. We won't be hitting 2TB for a while.

// George


-- 
George Georgalis, systems architect, administrator <IXOYE><