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
