SATA RAID for FC5 (2.6.16.16)

[BDMcGrew]

Morning all!

Have a customer running FC5 with a 2.6.16.16 kernel (no, sorry, they can't upgrade because of other hardware and software dependencies).

Need to find a PCI or PCIe SATA RAID card that'll handle four drives in a RAID5 array and work with FC5 2.6.16.16 kernel.

I do have the ability to modify the kernel, if the card has support for that old of a kernel. I've tried some newer cards with support for 2.6.2x and the drivers are just too new.

Any suggestions? Need something that is currently available as a new product today, as this might be an ongoing deployment. Don't really have the ability to use used hardware.

Thanks,

-brian

[DBelton]

you may try looking for one with the silicon image sil 3114 controller on the card. It has been supported for probably the longest of the sata raid cards. There are 4 port PCI versions still being made and available for purchase out there. I just picked up one myself from newegg.

(be careful looking at the cards, some say 4 port, but it's 2 internal and 2 external, but only 2 ports total can be in use at a time. they are switched between the internal and external ports.)

and you also want to get the PCIe card if you can find one. PCI will limit your transfer speed drastically, and you would only get around 45 MB/sec transfer to your drives

Edit:

I know for sure that the sil3114 cards were seen and worked fine under F8, but that's the oldest versions I ran with a sata raid card in my machines.

With the card I have, there are options to set up the raid using the onboard firmware, and it will also make "legacy" raid that can be seen by DOS. I didn't use that, and set my raid arrays up with mdadm and they work fine.

[BDMcGrew]

Thanks for the quick reply!

While I was waiting I found the LSI Logic MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i ... with, according to their support matrix, has support going from 2.4.X up to 2.6.30, so it looks like this card should do what I want it to. I'm no stranger to compiling kernel modules!

Thanks!

-b

[glennzo]

Moved to EOL (End Of Life) Versions.

[DBelton]

looks like that card will work for you

as I mentioned above, grab the PCIe card instead of the PCI card. you will get much better throughput to your drives. It looks like it's basically the same controller for either PCI or PCIe, so compatibility will be the same for either. So go for the speed

whhhaaaaa??? you mean that F5 is end of life already, Glennzo? LOL

[assen]

Hi,

I'd say, check 3Ware - they run very well under Linux and should do the job for your out of the box. The 80xx series is long time EOL, but is plain PCI and, AFAIK, there was a RAID-5 version. A slightly newer one, also for plain PCI, is the 95xx series - maybe even still in production.

WWell,