[CentOS] LSI 2008 SAS driver?

Can anyone tell me which versions of CentOS/kernel support the LSI 2008 SAS chipset, as used in the Supermicro X8DT6-F motherboard?

It's billed as a "hardware RAID" controller. Is this real RAID or fake RAID? I will be having two hard drives in a mirrored configuration. I usually use MD software RAID1, mirroring at the partition level. Would this still be best with this chipset, or would hardware RAID1 mirroring be better?

Anything else I should watch out for?

I'm also interested in whether it's even worthwhile going for the SAS rather than just sticking to SATA drives with AHCI.

Thanks in advance for any comments!

Tony