[CentOS] CentOS 5.5 does not recognise SAS drives with LSI 1068E Controller

I need to do a new CentOS net install on a new server having the
Supermicro X7DVL-3 motherboard:

  http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/xeon1333/5000V/X7DVL-3.cfm

Based on that info I assume the board having a "8x SAS Ports via LSI
1068E Controller". We received the server with 3 drives + 1 spare as
hw RAID-5 preinstalled. During bootup I see that the drives are
initialised and everything seems ok.

The issue I am facing is that when trying to install CentOS no hard
drives are recognised.

I am a bit confused as others have reported CentOS 5.3 and 5.4 working
"out of the box" with the same controller:

  http://www.linux-archive.org/centos/287219-installing-centos-5-4-64bit-server-lsi-sas-1068e-controller.html

So I assumed that the megaraid_sas driver shipped with CentOS should
support the controller?

What confuses me also is the output of lspci:

  MegaRAID SAS 3208 ELP

Does this mean its not the 1068E controller inside but something else?
Or CentOS misidentifies it?

So I assume the controller is not supported and I need a binary driver
for it. For 1068e it should be:

  http://www.lsi.com/storage_home/products_home/standard_product_ics/sas_ics/lsisas1068e/index.html

and the driver I need is inside the file
mptlinux-4.26.00.00-1-rhel5.5.x86_64.dd.gz

But how do I go applying this driver during installation as the server
has no floppy drive?

And what happens if I get the driver installed and then the server's
kernel is updated? Do I need reinstall the driver somehow?

Best regards,
Peter