Oh damn... why did no one tell me?
Well, that about settles it. This file server is cursed.
After replacing the CPU and motherboard, I booted up my once again completed fileserver to find out, unlike as advertised, the ARC-1300ix 16 does not support Solaris in any fashion. At all.
Areca has altered the product page too, conveniently after I purchased, to read “Solaris 10/11 (will be available with 6Gb/s Host Adapter)”.
Excuse me? It will be out when something is available that doesn’t even come on motherboards yet, let alone standalone adapters? Not to mention the drivers might possibly not support the card I bought which explicitly claimed support?
Bullshit.
The manual, of course, still claims Solaris support — both the one that came with the card, and online in the form of revision 1.1 (2009/5/8, hosted here in case Areca takes it down). Incidentally, it only offers RHEL for Linux support, and this comes as a floppy image!
For anyone that’s curious, it uses a Marvell 88se6440 plugged into an LSI SASX28. The latter is a port multiplier, supported by Solaris. The former is the controller, supports four drives and is most definitely not supported. Effectively, Areca is jamming in four drives per 3Gb/s channel, squeezed over a PCI-E 4x connection. I am more than slightly vexed.
I have filed a complaint through Areca’s web support form, but given that it didn’t even confirm that anything had been sent, I don’t hold out any hope for a response. If there isn’t one coming quickly, I’ll be requesting a refund from the distributor. My only concern is that there is now really no option but to pony up for the Adaptec 31605, since I no longer have the luxury of four PCI-E x16 slots to play with.
Update:
Areca has responded, and in a timely manner. Q3 huh? Soooo maybe October, factoring in delays. That’s a long time to wait to set up a file server. Have some nice people on the Sun side helping, but I believe it may still be dwelling in refund territory.
—-
Dear Sir,
in our plan, we will release the driver for solaris as soon as the 6G SAS HBA available, the planned schedule is the end of Q3. the driver can be used for 6G and 3G SAS HBA both. sorry for the inconvenience.
Best Regards,
[Removed for privacy]
Areca Technology Tech-support Division
Tel : [Removed for privacy]
Fax : 886-2-87975970
Http://www.areca.com.tw
Ftp://ftp.areca.com.tw
Mirror Ftp :
ftp://areca.starline.de
Popularity: 100% [?]
I am looking to do the same thing (a 20 HDD file server using ZFS) and have had the same conundrums finding a controller card that just acts dumb and presents all the drives to the OS.
My first choice was an IBM ServeRAID-8s that I got off eBay cheaply, but it ended up not supporting 1.5TB drives. Boo.
Then I purchased the infamous Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8, which works fantastic in any OS but OpenSolaris, because OpenSolaris doesn’t support the Marvell 88SE6480 chipset it uses. Normally it wouldn’t be an issue – I’d pirate a copy of Windows and be done with it, but I really want to use ZFS.
That pretty much means only cards using the LSI 1068E chipset are going to work properly with OpenSolaris, as Sun uses the 1068E in their servers, making support a given.
It’s slim pickings when it comes to finding a PCI Express card using the 1068E. The contenders are:
SuperMicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 – cheapest of the bunch, but uses the Marvell chipset, which doesn’t work in OpenSolaris. I could use Windows as an alternative, but don’t want to really and ZFS is too cool to pass up.
Promise FTTX8660 – JBOD mode means concatenate disks – doesn’t act as a dumb HBA. No good for ZFS.
RocketRAID 2680 – JBOD mode means concatenate disks – doesn’t act as a dumb HBA. No good for ZFS.
Areca ARC-1300ix-16 – supports 16 drives on one card, but doesn’t support OpenSolaris (like you painfully found out). Can’t find any info on its chipset.
Adaptec RAID 3805 – no JBOD/single disk operation. Expensive. Fail.
Supermicro AOC-USASLP-L8i & AOC-USAS-L8i – no good because they aren’t standard PCI Express. They apparently work when plugged in backwards, but I don’t want to rely on the word of a single dude on a mailing list.
Intel SASUC8I – Manual states it supports IT (initiator target) mode, which means it bypasses all RAID bullshit and just presents the drives to the OS. It uses the 1068E LSI chip. It’s by Intel, so shouldn’t suck. Relatively cheap. Not a single smidge of first hand info about it on the net and I don’t want to be the guinea pig.
LSISAS3081E-R – same card as used in Sun’s servers, so will work well. Problem is, I can’t confirm if the card’s BIOS will allow to run in JBOD/get-out-of-my-fucking-way and let ZFS do it all mode. I read some stuff about flashing it with the Supermicro BIOS that does allow it, but again, I don’t want to be the guinea pig!
ATTO ExpressSAS H308 – expensive. No OpenSolaris documented support. Uses Intel IOC340 chip.
It looks like I will purchase the Intel SASUC8I and brace myself :)
Yep, it’s definitely a pain once you exceed ten disks. I’ve ended up pre-ordering the 31605. Single disk JBOD is definitely a work-around, its stupidly expensive and should the card die I’m potentially locked into Adaptec… but it works.
How painful is that for a resolution? Hate to say it’s what I’ve been pushed to… simply just wanting something that works.
I had even ordered a pair of LSI SAS3081E-R from NewEgg using a US buyer, but none were in stock. Even the cards that are good just aren’t available…
Makes me want to buy a Highpoint RocketRaid 2340, load Ubuntu and go back to mdadm, as much as I know my speed will suffer. Either that or give up on OpenSolaris and hit FreeBSD’s ZFS purely for better hardware compatibility.
The 3805 has JBOD btw — just there’s every chance if you take that disk off the controller, it won’t read on another brand of controller. This is the risk I’ve taken and will no doubt find out soon…
You’d think some enterprising Chinese company would come along and slap the LSI 1068E chip on a card and sell it for AU$300 or so and make a killing. Alas.
Keep the blog up to date with how you go homeslice :)
Oh, but they have:
http://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?SearchText=3081E-R&Country=&CatId=0&IndexArea=product_en&ssk=y
Then again, would you trust that silicon?
Hi Guys,
I’m also playing around with a Opensolaris-based ZFS-storage, I will use an
OEM-SATA/SAS-Controller from Fujitsu-Technology-Solution (formerly Fujitsu-Siemens FSC). Art.-Number is “S26361-F3257-L8″ (RAID0/1/1e SAS based on LSI SAS1068-Chip). I just ordered 4 pieces for ca. 100€ each (excl. VAT) in Germany,
see e.g. http://business.lieske-elektronik.de/artikel_LSI-8-Kanal-Serial-ATA-SATA-RAID-Controller-PCI-X-128-MB__728062.htm.
This one should run with Opensolaris as this chip is used in SUN’s Fire X4540,
but you can still read about some Probs related to PortMultipliers.
Perhaps we have to fiddle a little bit with the right firmware, see Chapter 3 in the
Productmanuals from the supermicro-contollers which are based on LSI, d’load pdf
them from the website, while the firmare is at http://ftp.supermicro.com/driver/SAS/LSI/1064_1068/. I will report my expieriences in some days to you.
…formerly the SUN Fire X4500 uses an Marvell 88SX6081, so perhaps an Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8, based on the Marvell 6480 should also run.
regards Dirk
Hi Dirk!
Did you get the Fujitsu card (S26361-F3257-L8) to work with open/solaris?
I’m currently facing the problem with finding a reasonable card myself, and these cards seems to be available relatively cheap.
Best regards, Emil
Sorry for the long delay,
yes the 8-port Fujitsu (S26361-F3257-L8)works with nexenta out of the box (equipped with “simple-raid” RAID1-Firmware) Later I flashed the “pure” Initiator-Target-Firmware (no RAID-Funktionalty), but I have to use a other Mainboard for flashing, it did not run in the Intel-Serverboard.
you can contact me (d.raabe@mittelhessen.de)
greets Dirk
How about a QLogic FC HBA, such as QLA2460 and a JBOD enclosure, such as this Xyratex,
http://www.xyratex.com/products/storage-systems/storage-RA-1602-1216-JBD.aspx
FYI, I was the guinea pig and the Intel LSI based card works just fine with opensolaris. You just have to flash it with the 3081 IT firmware. For whatever reason, Intel doesn’t appear to actually supply IT firmware themselves (that I could find).
Intel SASUC8I
What about an LSI SAS1078 based card? The LSI documentation says that it is supported in Solaris x86 (as of 2007) but that doesn’t mean it is supported in OpenSolaris.
The Intel AFCSASRISER card is based on the 1078 and costs about as much as a SASUC8I if you also consider the price for the cables (which is included with this card according to the specs).
It is really strange that this IC is not listed in LSIs official ICs list as it seems to be an enhancement of 1068/1068E (E means PCIe version).
The riser card comes with a DDR2 memory slot for cache. Do you have to put a module into this slot to run it or will it run without memory. I want to use JBOD mode which makes cache a bit superfluous I believe.
We just built a opensolaris JBOD believing in the Area docs for the ARC-1300. We purchased 2 cards and designed our entire platform arround their offering.
Support at Areca keep telling us “next month.” I’ve sworn off Areca and our company will NEVER purchase another of their devices.
Supermicro AOC-USASLP-L8i & AOC-USAS-L8i
i am using this controller too with opensolaris an solaris 10/09
They both work wonderfull.
The only thing you have to do is replacing the “steel” on the PCB with one with screws on the other side. therefore you can use some old “steel” from unused old NICs. nothing to place backwards. Just the screws on the steel are on the opposite side.
output from an USASLP
bash-3.00# raidctl -l 0
Controller Type Version
—————————————————————-
c0 LSI_1068E 1.26.00.00
bash-3.00#
regards
daniel
Here’s one way to do UIO-to-PCIe, with diagrams, using the AOC-USAS-L8i as an example: http://blog.agdunn.net/?p=391