Hans du Plooy skrev:
On Mon, 2007-03-05 at 21:25 +0100, Anders Norrbring wrote:
Hans du Plooy skrev:
http://froogle.google.de/froogle?q=adaptec+2820SA&btnG=Froogle-Suche
And this card is definitely not crap.
Hans
I've been doing some digging... Seems like ALL Adaptec SATA and SAS RAID (or not RAID) controllers make use of Adaptec's own closed-source drivers.. *sigh* Where did you read that? Most of Adaptec's hardware raid cards use the aacraid driver that's part of the kernel. The link I posted certainly shows a card that does - I've used many of them, as well as their SCSI cousins (I can't comment on SAS - never tried it)
I downloaded their driver packs to see what was in them, and this is in the README file: 1. Overview ------------ The SHIM (Adaptec HostRAID re-compilable package ) code model allows the end user to recompile the code for Adaptec HostRAID without requiring access to Adaptec closed source RAID code. The proprietary code is supplied in a pre-compiled object module that can be linked to the recompiled source code to provide a fully functioning Linux device driver. This procedure can be used to recompile the SAS HostRAID driver (adp94xx) or the SATA2 drivers (aar81xx/adp3132). The SAS driver, adp94xx, supports the ASC-48300, ASC-44300 and ASC-58300 SAS controllers. The SATA2 driver, aar81xx, supports the AAR-1420SA and AAR-1430SA controllers and adp3132 supports AAR-1220SA Controller. Seems like it's not the aacraid driver in any of those, and I was actually aiming for the 48300 (http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/products/sas/host/SAS-48300/) which isn't even a RAID controller... Then "HostRAID" isn't h/w RAID, it's software, much like the infamous nVidia chipsets and Promise. I don't know if those driver packs are needed to just communicate with the drives, if not, I'm home safe with those controllers if I should use Linux' own software RAID. I should take a look at 1420SA and 2420SA as well, I just noticed that they exist, I don't have a clue about what they are/do yet.
The only issue when you use a card to upgrade the disc setup on an older installation, the aacraid module might not have support for the newer card. Mantel's kernels used to be useful for that.
Anyone with opinions on Highpoint vs. Adaptec? Adaptec. My experience with Highpoint has been no better than with Promise. But that's just my 2c
With emphasis on the words *used to be*, Huberts kernels are no more... :( I actually haven't heard anything negative about Highpoint so far, not much positive either... At least they do manufacture quite some chips for Adaptec, so I guess their stuff shouldn't stink too much? -- Anders Norrbring Norrbring Consulting