Hardware RAID Support (was RE: One Last Plea For Vinum Assistance)

From: Sandy Rutherford (sandy_at_krvarr.bc.ca)
Date: 01/20/05

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    Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 05:22:36 -0800
To: "FreeBSD Questions" <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>

    >>>>> On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 22:57:21 -0800,
    >>>>> "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> said:

    > This did teach me a lesson that I kind of knew already but
    > didn't think too much about. That is, a software array is no substitute
    > for a hardware array. ...

    Agreed completely, which leads me to my question.

    Does anybody know what the plans are for the SCSI hardware raid
    controllers vis a vis CAM? I have a Mylex Extreme RAID 1100, which
    uses the mlx(4) driver. The mlx(4) driver does not use CAM, whereas
    its cousin the mly(4) driver does interact with CAM.

    I corresponded with Michael Smith, the principal author of both
    drivers, a while ago and he told me that it was a pain in the neck to
    integrate mly(4) with CAM and he did not forsee this ever being done
    for mlx(2). One side-effect of this is that although the RAID setup
    utility for the card does allow a channel(s) to be designated a plain
    non-RAID SCSI channel for use by a tape drive or CDROM, the FreeBSD
    driver does not support this. Also, the mlxcontrol(8) facility is a
    little on the basic side, with most of the capabilities of the card
    not supported.

    My main point is that support for SCSI hardware RAID seems to be a bit
    of a dog's breakfast at the moment and are there plans to brings
    things together?

    BTW:

    1. Please do not ask me to donate a card to the developers. I don't have a
       spare. However, I know how the game is played and I am not asking
       anybody to donate their time to my problems. My only serious
       problem was a bug in mlxcontrol, for which I submitted a PR, with a
       patch.

    2. If anybody is looking for a hardware RAID card, I can recommend the
       Extreme RAID 1100. It's a triple channel U2W card. I got mine for
       a song on Ebay. Note that it is definitely worth the trouble to
       update to the latest version of the firmware.

    ...Sandy
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