Hardware supported?

[MeX]

On Mon, 2007-Feb-26 at 00:56:59 +0100, Fluffles wrote:
> Onboard RAID does not really exist. The actual RAID is done by drivers;
> onboard RAID is actually software RAID with a minor RAID BIOS which can
> write metainformation about the array configuration and has BIOS
> bootstrap support. This is also called "fake RAID". FreeBSD does support
> some fake RAID metainformation though, by reading the metainfo from the
> disks and assigning it's own software RAID-mechanism to it. For
> information of which metainformation formats are supported, checkout the
> ataraid(4) manpage:
> http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ataraid&apropos=0&sektion=4&manpath=FreeBSD+6.2-RELEASE&format=html
> 
> If your fakeraid is called "Intel MatrixRAID", then yes FreeBSD does
> detect the metainfo and you will have a "ar0" for your first fakeraid
> array. You should be able to install (and boot) from fakeRAID since
> there is BIOS bootstrap support.

What does mean that ataraid driver can NOT write metadata format? I use
NVIDIA MediaShield on SUN X2100 M2 and it seems that all works:

s1# atacontrol list
ATA channel 0:
    Master:      no device present
    Slave:       no device present
ATA channel 1:
    Master:      no device present
    Slave:       no device present
ATA channel 2:
    Master:  ad4 <ST3160827AS/3.42> Serial ATA v1.0
    Slave:       no device present
ATA channel 3:
    Master:  ad6 <ST3160827AS/3.42> Serial ATA v1.0
    Slave:       no device present

s1# atacontrol status ar0
ar0: ATA RAID1 subdisks: ad6 ad4 status: READY

s1# pciconf -lv
atapci1 at pci0:5:0:class=0x010485 card=0x534c108e chip=0x037f10de rev=0xa3 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'NVIDIA Corporation'
    class      = mass storage
    subclass   = RAID

dmesg output:

ad4: 152627MB <Seagate ST3160827AS 3.42> at ata2-master SATA150
ad6: 152627MB <Seagate ST3160827AS 3.42> at ata3-master SATA150
ar0: 152627MB <nVidia MediaShield RAID1> status: READY
ar0: disk0 READY (master) using ad6 at ata3-master
ar0: disk1 READY (mirror) using ad4 at ata2-master


MeX