On Mon, 2009-11-16 at 21:49 +0000, James Bensley wrote:
Ok, I'm back again...
Thanks again to all for more replies and info, all the info of the list members is really appreciated.
So I have found this card and wondered if anyone has a second opinion on it (http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/AOC-SAT2-MV8.cfm). Seeing as it states on the website that the CD that comes with the card has RedHat drivers on it, and I will be using CentOS 5.4 i386 on my little home server everything should work just dandy shouldn't it? I am trying find some examples online of people using this card with CentOS in a software RAID but nothing yet so wondered if anyone here has any input here?
-- Regards, James ;)
If I am not mistaken that card uses the Marvell MV88SX5081 chipset and uses the sata_mv module (after a little googling).
I have been reading around google and found that support for this was added in CentOS 4 (sata_mv).
I also saw some posts regarding instability with this driver... sort of a use at own risk scenario.
Some were saying disabling hw RAID helped, but I haven't used that card so I couldn't tell you. Maybe someone else on the list has used a card with the MV88SX5081 chipset?
I have only played with the AOC-USAS-L8i card and that wasn't in Linux (it was for an Opensolaris build), we just needed to buy SFF-8087 to 4 x SATA cables to make it work. If you want to use SW raid, I might suggest going for a card that is just adds SATA ports and has no onboard RAID, but it is up to you.
Tait