Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2003 04:57:00 -0400 From: Gary Stanley <gary@outloud.org> To: Andrew Snow <als@kanji.com.au> Cc: freebsd-scsi@freebsd.org Subject: Re: adaptec 2120S report Message-ID: <6.0.0.14.0.20030919045155.0357ab10@localhost> In-Reply-To: <3F690CB5.6000001@kanji.com.au>
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At 09:39 PM 9/17/2003, you wrote: >After my failure to get the Serveraid-5i working, I have put in an Adaptec >2120S. This card has very similar features to the Serveraid card, with the >addition that it actually works in FreeBSD. > >After a couple of days of testing I can recommend this card. I have >6x36GB IBM 10krpm drives running in RAID 50 configuration with FreeBSD >5.1-REL. The only downside was I cannot get it working at Ultra-320 with >this IBM x345 hotswap backplane, but it is working great at Ultra-160. > >With my configuration, a quick test of file system sequential access speed >shows reads at 47mb/s and writes at 27mb/s. The good news is, while the >array is degraded and rebuilding, read is 10mb/s and write is 6mb/s which >is still quite respectable. The box still feels fast enough while the >array is rebuilding. The downside is rebuilding the RAID5 containers took >5 hours - each. > >Two problems with this controller in FreeBSD 5.1: > >1. FreeBSD won't boot while the array is rebuilding. It hangs after >detecting aacd0. I did not try waiting 5 hours to see if it continued >after the array rebuild finished. >Workaround is to only hot swap drives while FreeBSD is running, and do not >reboot until rebuild is finished. Alternatively, boot into the controller >BIOS and wait for rebuild to finish there. > >2. I could not get SMP kernel to work - its a Xeon 2.6ghz supporting >hyperthreading. SMP worked without the controller, but hangs during boot >with the controller. Luckily this is not a big problem for us as we only >need a single CPU and hyperthreading is of minor/dubious advantage. >Workaround is to simply not use an SMP kernel. > >Other than that, it seems to be working very nicely. I look forward to >seeing the Serveraid / ips driver issues resolved in 5.2... > The issues you are having are something similar to what I experience. When installing FreeBSD 4.x/5.2 onto a building array, the machine panic's and then the background initialization restarts. (Building a 500GB RAID5 array takes me 12 hours, lol) Issues #2 is something I'm not familiar with on 5, but with 4 I am using a 2120S with SMP (Not hyperthreading)
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