[CentOS] CentOS and Marvell SAS/SATA drivers

Fri Mar 4 00:52:46 UTC 2011
Chuck Munro <chuckm at seafoam.net>

Hello all,

I've been on a real roller coaster ride getting a large virtual host up 
and running.  One troublesome thing I've discovered (the hard way) is 
that the drivers for Marvell SAS/SATA chips still have a few problems.

After Googling around quite a bit, I see a significant number of others 
have had similar issues, especially evident in the Ubuntu forums but 
also for a few RHEL/CentOS users.

I have found that under heavy load (in my case, simply doing the initial 
sync of large RAID-6 arrays) the current 0.8 driver can wander off into 
the weeds after a while, less so for the older 0.5 driver in CentOS-5. 
It would appear that some sort of bug has been introduced into the newer 
driver.

I've had to replace the Marvell-based controllers with LSI, which seem 
rock solid.  I'm rather disappointed that I've wasted good money on 
several Marvell-based controller cards (2 SAS/SATA and 2 SATA).

My question ... is anyone aware of the *real* status of these drivers? 
The Internet is full of somewhat conflicting reports.  I'm referring to 
'mvsas' and 'sata-mv', both of which seem to have issues under heavy 
load.  It sure would be nice to return to using what appear to be 
well-made controller cards.  I understand that even Alan Cox has 
expressed some frustration with the current driver status.

FWIW, I had similar problems under the RHEL-6 evaluation OS too.

Chuck