Subject: Re: Dell Support and NetBSD?
To: Roy Flacco <rff@mcci.com>
From: Martti Kuparinen <martti.kuparinen@iki.fi>
List: netbsd-help
Date: 11/30/2006 10:51:13
Roy Flacco wrote:

> Can you tell me, is your "hardware RAID controller" a SAS 5/iR, running
> SATA drives?  If so, what driver are you using?  If not, can you tell me
> what RAID hardware you have that is supported by existing NetBSD drivers?

Right now there's no NetBSD driver for either SAS 5/iR or PERC 5/i. I have one
server with PERC 5/i so right now I'm forced to use FreeBSD on it (with pkgsrc
of course :-).

This is other hardware RAID we have here:

Dell PowerEdge 1800 (CERC 1.5/6ch = hardware SATA RAID)
-------------------------------------------------------
aac0 at pci3 dev 9 function 0: Dell CERC SATA RAID 1.5/6ch
aac0: interrupting at irq 11
aac0: i80303 at 100MHz, 64MB mem (48MB cache), optional battery not installed
aac0: Kernel 4.1-0 [Build 7417], Monitor 4.1-0 [Build 7417], S/N C2BFED
aac0: Controller supports:
1097c<WCACHE,DATA64,HOSTTIME,RAID50,WINDOW4GB,SOFTERR,ALARM>
ld0 at aac0 unit 0: RAID 1 (Mirror)
ld0: 148 GB, 19448 cyl, 255 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 312432384 sectors

Dell PowerEdge 1800 (PERC 4/SC = hardware SCSI RAID)
----------------------------------------------------
amr0 at pci2 dev 5 function 0: AMI RAID <PERC 4/SC>
amr0: interrupting at irq 11
amr0: firmware 351S, BIOS 1.10, 64MB RAM
ld0 at amr0 unit 0: RAID 1, optimal
ld0: 69880 MB, 8908 cyl, 255 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 143114240 sectors

Dell PowerEdge 2600 (PERC 4/Di = hardware SCSI RAID)
----------------------------------------------------
amr0 at pci8 dev 8 function 0: AMI RAID <PERC 4/Di>
amr0: interrupting at irq 11
amr0: firmware 251S, BIOS 1.07, 128MB RAM
ld0 at amr0 unit 0: RAID 1, optimal
ld0: 136 GB, 17834 cyl, 255 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 286511104 sectors


All these were with Dell provided RAID controllers. Then we have also few
servers with add-on RAID cards like this:

Dell PowerEdge 2400 (Adaptec 3200S = hardware SCSI RAID)
--------------------------------------------------------
iop0 at pci1 dev 6 function 1: I2O adapter <ADAPTEC 3200S>
iop0: interrupting at irq 5
iop0: configuring...
dpti0 at iop0 tid 0: DPT/Adaptec RAID management interface
ld0 at iop0 tid 522: <ADAPTEC, RAID-1, 370F> direct access, fixed
ld0: 17366 MB, 8820 cyl, 64 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 35565568 sectors
ld1 at iop0 tid 523: <ADAPTEC, RAID-1, 370F> direct access, fixed


All these servers are "rock solid" running NetBSD 3.1. The disk speed is good
and I have had zero problems with these controllers (and now only 1 broken disk
since 1999 -- this happened last week on the PE2400 where one 72 GB disk failed).

Martti