Software RAID issues (was Re: Suggestions solicited, server bring up)

[Stephen Ryan]

On Wed, 2009-11-18 at 15:11 -0500, Ben Scott wrote:

> [2] Myself, I've never had a problem the "megaraid" driver that's been
> part of the standard Linux kernel since circa 2001.  Obviously,
> experiences vary.

I've just had a rather foul run-in with a MegaRaid chipset embedded on a
SuperMicro server board, since it wasn't supported by the version that's
been part of the standard Linux kernel since ca. 2001 (and hasn't been
updated since).  I ended up having to reflash with a dumb firmware that
just presents the disks as JBOD; theoretically, there are driver disks
that work with older versions of RedHat, but I've never run across a
special driver boot disk that I haven't misplaced, and if they're not
doing the work to put it in the standard kernel, I don't have a whole
lot of hope for it continuing to work with future updates to the
kernel.  

Maybe there are some good hardware RAID systems out there.  I wouldn't
know, as I've never actually seen one (that might be because anybody who
actually has one wouldn't let the likes of me near it!)

-- 
Stephen Ryan <stephen at sryanfamily.info>