> we are looking for a new server, which should have a RAID array
> (probably with SATA disks, as the SCSI price tag is a little bit
> high) and run under NetBSD.

> Can anybody share his experience with RAID controllers/setups and/or
> give a recommendation?

I have just been involved in dealing with SATA "hardware" (really
firmware) RAID cards.

The machine is some highish-end Xeon something-or-other.  The RAID
cards involved are

twe0 at pci3 dev 1 function 0: 3ware Escalade
twe0: interrupting at irq 10
twe0: 12 ports, Firmware FE7S 1.05.00.065, BIOS BE7X 1.08.00.048
twe0: Monitor ME7X 1.01.00.038, PCB Rev5    , Achip 3.20    , Pchip 1.30-66 

and

aac0 at pci4 dev 1 function 0: Adaptec ASR-2410SA
aac0: interrupting at irq 11
aac0: Unknown processor at 100MHz, 48MB cache, optional battery not installed, kernel 4.1-0

Both of them work fine, as far as I can tell so far.  The Escalade has
been beaten on rather heavily and seems thoroughly stable; the Adaptec
was put into use only a few days ago and, while it seems fine so far,
it hasn't really been stressed yet.

There was an incident some time ago (with another machine) where
something kept locking up - whether the driver or the RAID card was
never determined; we eventually scrapped "hardware" RAID and went with
RAIDframe.  (Marginally slower, but it didn't hang.)  Unfortunately I
don't have enough info at hand to tell you what the card was.

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