Re: Supermicro SAS controller
On 5/3/2012 8:48 AM, Ramon Hofer wrote:
> Thanks for the warning. I will carefully check about the LSI 9240-4i and
> the Intel 6Gb SAS expander.
SAS expanders are transparent. They have no bearing on supported drive
sizes. That is entirely up to the HBA firmware. And in this case the
9240 supports >2TB drives, as listed in the docs I linked.
> I was just googling for the LSI SAS 9240-4i. It seems as it uses the same
> chipset as the Intel expansion card (see post #5 in [1]).
No, they're different chips. LSI manufactures a few thousand different
ICs. Both of these products have LSI chips, but they are not the same
chip. The Intel board has an LSISAS2x24 SAS expander ASIC. The LSI
9240-4i RAID HBA has an LSISAS2008 storage controller ASIC. These are
entirely different ICs.
> They should be supported by the hwraid packages [2].
>
> [1] http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1037845618
> [2] http://hwraid.le-vert.net/wiki/DebianPackages
>
> So I think this looks promising for the controller and expansion cards?
The default Debian kernel should automatically load the correct megaraid
driver if using JBOD mode. If using RAID mode you may have to do some
manual driver intervention. That 2nd link seems to show all the
packages/binaries you'll need for management.
>>>> Glag it's more stable now with an updated kernel but I'd be keep
>>>> monitoring the array during some days... and if you experience another
>>>> issue with the disks, I would reconsider in replacing the hard disk
>>>> controller or moving to SATA disks, instead.
His disks are fine. The Marvell SAS driver is problem. This is a
thoroughly documented. The mvsas driver is simply crap.
>>> Thanks.
>>> I think I'll go with the solution Stan posted (LSI 9240-4i and Intel
>>> SAS expander).
>>
>> Mmm, yes. I can't tell for that specific model but LSI is a good
>> manufacturer for HBA solutions and also linux-friendly, at least that's
>> what I've heard :-)
The overall best quality, performance, and best supported SAS/SATA HBAs
on the planet, period. Which is why so many tier 1 server vendors sell
OEM LSI cards, the biggest two being Dell (PERC) and IBM (ServeRAID).
Their boards are rebadged LSI boards with slightly tweaked firmware
(branding only, not function). This goes all the way back to the days
well before LSI acquired AMI and Mylex. Dell OEM'd AMI's MegaRAID
boards and IBM OEM'd Mylex boards. IBM acquired Mylex in 2001, then
sold them to LSI a few years later. Then LSI acquired the RAID division
of AMI, and ended up with the two premier RAID card manufacturers on the
planet. Which is why they are the RAID powerhouse in the market today.
Oh, forgot to mention they also acquired 3ware a few years ago. That
acquisition was more to kill the competition than steal their IP. All
the current 3ware boards are rebadged LSI models, or slightly different
configurations of same. And they still have a 3ware-esque firmware.
> Yes, I hope I won't have any problems with them. Especially because they
> too promise SuSE and Red Hat support but only have a Debian 5 driver on
> their homepage.
Never use the drivers from the LSI site. They're always out of date.
Use what came with your kernel. If it doesn't work right, upgrade your
kernel from backports (which you should do anyway). Mainline always has
more recent LSI drivers.
> But since the hwraid page shows good support for MegaRAID cards I'm
> optimistic :-)
I already told you all that. ;) But I don't blame you for
verifying--always smart to do.
--
Stan
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