zfs discuss - Oct 2006 - solaris-supported 8-port PCI-X SATA controller

I''ve lucked into some big disks, so I''m thinking of biting the
bullet
(screaming loudly in the process) and superceding the SATA controllers
on my motherboard with something that will work with hot-swap in
Solaris.  (did I mention before I''m still pissed about this?) I have
enough to populate all 8 bays (meaning adding 4 disks to what I have
now), so the 6 ports on the motherboard don''t quite cover it anyway,
and getting hotswap working was kind of the point of spending $2000 on
the new server.

But, as always, the problem is in finding a controller that Solaris
supports, including hotswap.  The last guy I remember going through
this here ended up still scrod because the board he got had a -7
instead of -9 variant of the controller chip and it *still* didn''t
work.

I might be able to use 2 4-port boards; I''m not absolutely sure I have
2 PCI-X slots (I''m away from home this week).

So can the combined wisdom of these lists point me to an exact vendor
and part-number of a PCI-X board for an AMD Opteron system that
Solaris supports SATA and hot-swap with?  Note I said "vendor";
I''d
like to know that the batch a vendor has actually works with Solaris,
since it seems fairly random whether any particular batch does or not.
 At least 4-port, preferably 8-port.  And, of course, very cheap :-).
I''m currently running snv_44, and don''t expect to drop
backwards a lot
from there.  If I need to add an available driver or configure tables
or something, cool (but I''ll need pointers to what needs to be done);
I don''t insist that it work out-of-the-box, just that I be able to get
it working.
-- 
David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd-b at dd-b.net>,
<http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/>
RKBA: <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/>
Pics: <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/>
Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>

Jason asked me to forward his reply on to the list, so here it is.

Thanks, Jason, for the specifics!  Very specific answers seem to be
what''s needed in this situation.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: themelon at themelon.org <themelon at themelon.org>
Date: Oct 5, 2006 11:50 AM
Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] solaris-supported 8-port PCI-X SATA controller
To: David Dyer-Bennet <dd-b at dd-b.net>


I am not able to directly reply to the list for some reason but the
only one that is supported
with the Marvell driver at this point is this one:

http://www.8anet.com/merchant.ihtml?pid=2655&lastcatid=129&step=4

I bough a different one myself only to find out that it had an older
revision of the chip that had
some serious issues.  The driver requires C0 or better.

If you want a 2 card 4 port solution I am curently using a 4 port
Si3114 PCI card purchased from
newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16815124020

You do have to flash the bios on this one with the IDE bios for the
3114 from SiliconImage because
the class code on the raid bios makes Solaris unable to see it.
Pretty cheap to get 8 ports for
$40 plus tax/shipping.  The only real issue I had was with 2+ cards I
ran out of real mode memory
because each card loaded it''s own version of it''s bios.  The
easy
solution was to set the PCI
slots that the card is installed in to not scan for option roms.
Solaris will still see and load
the driver for the card you just wont be able to boot from it.
Chances are good that if your
motherboard has PCI-X slots it will have the capability of disabling
the option rom scan.

Let me know if you have any other questions.  Also, please forward my
reply to the aliases for
other to see.

Jason


 I''ve lucked into some big disks, so I''m thinking of biting
the bullet
> (screaming loudly in the process) and superceding the SATA controllers
> on my motherboard with something that will work with hot-swap in
> Solaris.  (did I mention before I''m still pissed about this?) I
have
> enough to populate all 8 bays (meaning adding 4 disks to what I have
> now), so the 6 ports on the motherboard don''t quite cover it
anyway,
> and getting hotswap working was kind of the point of spending $2000 on
> the new server.
>
> But, as always, the problem is in finding a controller that Solaris
> supports, including hotswap.  The last guy I remember going through
> this here ended up still scrod because the board he got had a -7
> instead of -9 variant of the controller chip and it *still* didn''t
> work.
>
> I might be able to use 2 4-port boards; I''m not absolutely sure I
have
> 2 PCI-X slots (I''m away from home this week).
>
> So can the combined wisdom of these lists point me to an exact vendor
> and part-number of a PCI-X board for an AMD Opteron system that
> Solaris supports SATA and hot-swap with?  Note I said "vendor";
I''d
> like to know that the batch a vendor has actually works with Solaris,
> since it seems fairly random whether any particular batch does or not.
>  At least 4-port, preferably 8-port.  And, of course, very cheap :-).
> I''m currently running snv_44, and don''t expect to drop
backwards a lot
> from there.  If I need to add an available driver or configure tables
> or something, cool (but I''ll need pointers to what needs to be
done);
> I don''t insist that it work out-of-the-box, just that I be able to
get
> it working.
> --
> David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd-b at dd-b.net>,
<http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/>
> RKBA: <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/>
> Pics: <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/>
> Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>
> _______________________________________________
> zfs-discuss mailing list
> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org
> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
>



-- 
David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd-b at dd-b.net>,
<http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/>
RKBA: <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/>
Pics: <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/>
Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>