Date: Fri, 06 Mar 2009 12:43:35 +0000 From: Christopher Key <cjk32@cam.ac.uk> To: Daan Vreeken <Daan@vehosting.nl> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: SATA Port Multipliers in FreeBSD (6.3) Message-ID: <49B11A77.2040801@cam.ac.uk> In-Reply-To: <200903060103.16752.Daan@vehosting.nl> References: <49AFE0DF.9000003@cam.ac.uk> <200903060103.16752.Daan@vehosting.nl>
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Daan Vreeken wrote: > Hi Christopher, > > On Thursday 05 March 2009 15:25:35 Christopher Key wrote: > >> Hello, >> >> I'm looking to substantially expand the storage on my FreeBSD 6.3 home >> media server. With regards hardware, the simplest way to attach large >> numbers of drives seem to be to use SATA port multipliers, but I've been >> unable to find any consensus on their level of support in FreeBSD. I'm >> currently looking at a RocketRAID 2314 and SiI3726 based port >> multipliers. Has any had any experience with this combination? >> > > The Sil3726 works very well if you run a recent enough version of FreeBSD. We > use the device in a custom storage appliance. I don't know the RocketRAID > 2314 though. You need a SATA 2.0 controller for Port Multipliers to work. > > I'm pretty sure the RocketRAID 2314 is a SATA 2.0 controller. I've references in places to it supporting port multipliers, but have been unable to to find any further details on quite what this means. To be honest, I don't fully understand how the ATA system fits together. HighPoint offer a FreeBSD driver, but I don't know whether this replaces functionality within FreeBSD, or is an additional requirement. Nor do I know whether port multiplier support is the responsibility of the ATA driver, the ATA controller, both or either, nor whether the ATA controller being a RAID card in JBOD mode affects anything. I was thinking that for the RR2314 to work with port multipliers whilst it was doing hardware RAID, it must fully understand how to address drives behind a port multiplier and might do the same in JBOD mode, simply presenting the ATA driver with a list of drives. Whether this is valid reasoning, I've no idea. > FreeBSD has (experimental) support for Port Multipliers since the following > commit : > > On Thursday 10 April 2008 15:05:05 Søren Schmidt wrote: > >> sos 2008-04-10 13:05:05 UTC >> >> FreeBSD src repository >> > ... > >> Log: >> Add experimental support for SATA Port Multipliers >> >> Support is working on the Silicon Image SiI3124/3132. >> Support is working on some AHCI chips but far from all. >> >> Remember this is WIP, so test reports and (constructive) suggestions are >> welcome! >> Thanks, I've found the relevent revision in SVN, http://svn.freebsd.org/viewvc/base?view=revision&revision=178067 I'll read through the diffs to see if I can get a better idea of how everything works. Kind Regards, Christopher Key
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