LSI SAS 2008 (mfi) on SuperMicro X8SI6-F

[Damien Fleuriot]

On 2/17/11 12:10 PM, Oliver Brandmueller wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 12:07:17PM +0100, Damien Fleuriot wrote:
>> It looks rather unhappy:
>>
>> mybsd root  /usr/ports/sysutils/smartmontools
>>                                                                  #
>> /usr/local/sbin/smartctl -a /dev/da0
>> smartctl 5.40 2010-10-16 r3189 [FreeBSD 8.2-RC3 amd64] (local build)
>> Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net
>>
>> /dev/da0: No such file or directory
>> Smartctl: please specify device type with the -d option.
> 
> Thanx for the test and the quick reply! I'm really getting crazy on 
> this. All the SAS controllers seems to have nifty RAID features and 
> stuff... *sigh*
> 
> Thanx again,
> 		Oliver
> 

What is sad is that these controllers are becoming very mainstream now,
we're getting them more and more on Dell servers , and the fbsd project
still struggles with them (for reasons I don't know, might be LSI's
fault, might be a lack of resources or interest...)

I'm having a very hard time defending the use of fbsd for firewalls at
work, with the recent release of debian kfreebsd.

What's saving fbsd for the moment is the lack of a proper CARP
implementation on debian kfree.


Actually, cc'ing the list, I'd like to share my feelings on this.




@list:
I'm trying very hard to keep freebsd at work for our firewalls.
Recently, I installed new blade servers shipping with h700 controllers
(these attached to mfi w/o problems).

If, for some reason, we get h200 cards using the mps driver, I'll have
to install using software RAID instead.

This would be a *disaster* and extremely hard for me to justify to my boss.

The staff in the datacenters check the machines every day, making a
routing inspection to ensure no server has orange warning lights.

Typically when a hardware RAID's hard drive fails, the lights go orange
thus prompting them to warn us (in case we missed the nagios alert) for
a replacement.

If I had to use software RAID, we'd be giving up on this extra security
and, again, I'd have a very hard time justifying it.