LSI SAS 9211-8i

[Derek Buttineau]

We're looking at replacing the HP Raid controller in a HP DL380 G5 with a controller that supports JBOD for utilizing ZFS.  We're currently trialling this controller, an HP LSI board (https://h10057.www1.hp.com/ecomcat/hpcatalog/specs/provisioner/05/347786-B21.htm), but we're finding that it has some issues with the mpt driver, namely:

Driver doesn't seem to realize when a drive has been pulled, instead mptutil shows that the drive is still there but only 512B in size.
Driver also doesn't seem to realize when a drive has been reinserted

Both of those seem to end up leading to corruption in the zpool.

Another weird thing with that card, is that if a drive is pulled and the card reinitialized (for example rebooting), the order of the drives shift (i.e. if you pull da2, da3 becomes da2, da4 becomes da3, etc), which again causes problems with the zpool.

Anyway, the LSI SAS 9211-8i looks like a nice card, but am having difficulties determining if it'll be supported by the mpt driver.  Does anyone know if it'll work, or does anyone have any suggestions for a good JBOD controller for ZFS and hotswap?

Thanks.

--
Regards,

Derek Buttineau
Internet Systems Developer
Compu-SOLVE Internet Services
Compu-SOLVE Technologies, Inc

Phone:  705-725-1212 x255
E-Mail:  derek at csolve.net