[rescue] RAID on Solaris x86

[Phil Stracchino]

Earl Baugh wrote:
> Let me dig here...Ah found it.  Here's the card:
> http://www.lsi.com/storage_home/products_home/internal_raid/megaraid_sas/megaraid_sas_8408e/index.html?remote=1&locale=EN
> 
> I actually read the downloads and it's got a Solaris x86 (32 and 64 bit)
> driver.
> The list prices I've found for these were in the $500-$700 range per card.
> (yes, it was a very nice gift!)
> I did some checking after I got it and didn't find any of this model "cheap"
> on EBay...just checked, and there
> are some in the $500 range...


As I suspected, well outside my present budget.  Does look like a nice 
card though.

[...]

> BTW, you might not need 2 of these cards... you can get an "expander" which
> according to my friend,
> lets you expand (docs say at least 32 drives, with some of their cards
> supporting up to 100+ drives...)
> It's called an "extender", and apparently you don't get any "drop off" in
> performance...
> Googling for "LSI SAS Expander" will give you at least some info...
> (as will this link :
> http://www.lsi.com/storage_home/products_home/standard_product_ics/sas_expander_ics/index.html)
> You basically remove some cables from drives and connect them to this
> thing... (you end up with an external drive box of some sort...)

Yeah, so I see.  It appears it's an external expansion solution though. 
  The nice thing about the 3Ware (besides not costing me anything) is 
that it's got 12 internal ports to match the 12 hot-swap bays in this 
rackmount case.


Well, until someone comes up with working 3Ware drivers for Solaris, it 
looks like I need to come up with a different OS for the machine. 
Unless of course I take out the 3Ware controller for now and just fill 
the three PCI slots with supported 4-port SATA controllers.  (Since all 
I need is JBOD anyway....)

Throughput will probably suffer somewhat, but I'll be able to get the 
machine up and start working with it.


-- 
   Phil Stracchino, CDK#2     DoD#299792458     ICBM: 43.5607, -71.355
   alaric at caerllewys.net   alaric at metrocast.net   phil at co.ordinate.org
          Renaissance Man, Unix ronin, Perl hacker, Free Stater
                  It's not the years, it's the mileage.