# ciss driver supported controllers



## solennoid (Mar 19, 2018)

Good day everyone,

We are selecting HW for a project that is due to start in a couple of months, where we intend to install and run FreeBSD (11.1-RELEASE, waiting for 12 to be released). Since we are somehow forced to work with HPE we have performed an HW compatibility check against the available FreeBSD documentation, and noticed that the supported controllers seem quite old (at least not those provided with HPE server nowadays).

Digging a bit into the ciss.c driver from SVN repository we noticed indeed that some new controllers are at least enlisted (e.g. the "HP Smart Array P440") there. The question we have is thus: can we consider the list of controllers provided within ciss.c driver as those compatible with and supported by FreeBSD 11.1-RELEASE?

Thanks a lot for your support and to FreeBSD team!!!!

PS: I read from forum rules that there are specific mailing list for techincal discussions (and this might fall into this category) but I wanted first to give it a try here


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## SirDice (Mar 19, 2018)

solennoid said:


> (11.1-RELEASE, waiting for 12 to be released)


12.0 won't be released until Q1 2019. FreeBSD 11.2 will be released in June/July. I'm not sure when the release notes for 11.2 will be published but it's worth looking out for them. Besides the hardware notes for 11.0, you should also read the hardware notes for 11.1. 

https://www.freebsd.org/releases/11.2R/schedule.html


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## solennoid (Mar 19, 2018)

Thanks a lot for your feedback SirDice!!!

Still I would like to know if we can rely on the list of controllers provided in ciss.c driver.


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## SirDice (Mar 19, 2018)

solennoid said:


> Still I would like to know if we can rely on the list of controllers provided in ciss.c driver.


The driver code is probably the best place to check for support. But note that different controllers may be detected with a single entry if they share the same chipset for example.


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## solennoid (Mar 19, 2018)

Very good then! Is there any chance in your opinion we may have the documented ciss HW compatibility list aligned to reflect this?


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## SirDice (Mar 19, 2018)

Have a look at the same code in stable/11/*, that will be basis of the soon-to-be-released 11.2.


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## solennoid (Mar 19, 2018)

Thanks again SirDice!

We will thus refer to that HW list reported in the source code.


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## VladiBG (Mar 23, 2018)

One of my HP servers DL180 gen9 is with ciss0: <HP Smart Array P440> and it's work perfect so far. The problem is that there's no more `hpacucli` and if you need to reconfigure the raid you have to boot in RBSU. You can monitor your raid status and report it using `camcontrol`


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## solennoid (Mar 23, 2018)

Thanks for your reply VladiBG. This definitively confirms what we have been saying in the thread, but also confirms that most probably the official HW support documentation is outdated. Do you know how to or where to ask for having it updated?


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## VladiBG (Mar 23, 2018)

HPE provide only binary drivers for they products and they are not interested of providing official support for FreeBSD. 
The list of the officially supported OS can be found here: http://h17007.www1.hpe.com/us/en/enterprise/servers/supportmatrix/windows.aspx#.WrUEcD-saM8
https://www.hpe.com/us/en/servers/server-operating-systems.html


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## solennoid (Mar 23, 2018)

I was referring to FreeBSD HW list as reported in here: https://www.freebsd.org/releases/11.0R/hardware.html#disk  (search for "ciss")



> [i386,amd64] Controllers supported by the ciss(4) driver include:
> 
> 
> Compaq Smart Array 5300 (simple mode only)
> ...



As you may see your P440 controller is not mentioned. What I would suggest is to ask freeBSD to align this list with the one reported in the ciss.c source code:


> ciss_vendor_data[] = {
> { 0x0e11, 0x4070, CISS_BOARD_SA5|CISS_BOARD_NOMSI|CISS_BOARD_SIMPLE,
> "Compaq Smart Array 5300" },
> { 0x0e11, 0x4080, CISS_BOARD_SA5B|CISS_BOARD_NOMSI,"Compaq Smart Array 5i" },
> ...


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## VladiBG (Mar 23, 2018)

Some time ago i was looking in the ciss.c source and i was told that some of the hardware ids are added there only for reference. You can check the  cciss page in sourceforge here: http://cciss.sourceforge.net
https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=300551


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