[geeks] Poweredge 2400, SCSI details

[Phil Brutsche]

Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> You mean when used as hardware RAID, or any use of the controller at
> all?
> 
> That would not be good news at all.
> 
> The whole point of RAID is to handle flaky drives.

When it's in *any* RAID mode (you can specify a single drive to be a
stand-alone volume) it can happen - there are no problems if you pull
the RAID key and use it as a plain-jane Adaptec SCSI controller.  The 2
biggest causes I've seen for a controller lockup are:

a) Flaky power to the drives
b) Buggy drive firmware (BTDTGTTT)

The ultimate problem is that the Adaptec RAID firmware uses cooperative
multitasking, and if a drive stops responding suddenly the thread that
was talking to the drive gets stuck in an infinite loop, taking the
controller with it.

LSI Logic MegaRAID controllers can be had on the cheap and don't have
that problem, and I prefer to use them if at all possible.

Oh, and Solaris 9 does *not* work with the PE2400 RAID controller.

-- 

Phil Brutsche
phil at tux.obix.com