# A few questions regarding Adaptec RAID-controllers (aac/aacu/arcconf)



## FLAGEL (Jan 10, 2010)

We've just bought four Adaptec 51245 RAID-controllers that we're going to use with 8-Stable. As we've never had Adaptec hardware before I have a few questions related to their use. I saw there is an in-tree driver named aac(4), which I understood is distributed under the "Simplified BSD License" and is mostly maintained by Scott Long under a NDA as some bits are "closed". 

I also saw that Adaptec themselves distribute a driver named AACRAID but the latest supported version of FreeBSD is 7.1, might it be possible to find drivers for 8.0 as well? Or could one use the aacu.ko kernel module meant for 7.1 on 8.0?

Lastly, to fully utilize the cards functionality one has to use a binary only tool, sysutils/arcconf. And currently that tool is read-only unless using the aacu.ko. So aside from being a binary blob and allowing management through arcconf, is there anything else differentiating aacu from aac(4)?

If any of the above is incorrect please let me know. Also, if you know of any gotchas or helpful hints regarding Adaptec-hardware and FreeBSD it'd be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!


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## jgh@ (Jan 10, 2010)

Adaptec is horrible on FreeBSD. Run! We are switching all servers to LSI. Adaptec's distributed driver (aacu) is no better than the aac driver.


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## FLAGEL (Jan 10, 2010)

jgh said:
			
		

> Adaptec is horrible on FreeBSD. Run! We are switching all servers to LSI. Adaptec's distributed driver (aacu) is no better than the aac driver.



I see, do you happen to have more info on what makes Adaptec so horrible? I wish there was someone else verifying this as well.


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## J65nko (Jan 10, 2010)

According to discussions on the OpenBSD misc mailing lists, some people suspect some Adaptec cards have hardware/firmware design errors, which need to be worked around in software. Because Adaptec refuses to make documentation available, the OBSD project removed support for Adaptec RAID cards from the system.

See http://www.openbsd.dk/lyrics.html#38


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## FLAGEL (Jan 10, 2010)

J65nko said:
			
		

> According to discussions on the OpenBSD misc mailing lists, some people suspect some Adaptec cards have hardware/firmware design errors, which need to be worked around in software. Because Adaptec refuses to make documentation available, the OBSD project removed support for Adaptec RAID cards from the system.
> 
> See http://www.openbsd.dk/lyrics.html#38



I knew that OpenBSD dropped support for Adaptec because full functionality could only be archived through via binary blobs (aacu/arcconf) but I always thought that was a political stance, not that aac/aacu/arcconf wasn't working as intended.


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## jgh@ (Jan 11, 2010)

Well I've seen an entire system go do due to having write caching enabled, or disabled. Hard Drive firmware not being up-to-date. More often, the caching seems to cause an issue.

When it's not the hard drive firmware, Adaptec conveniently has a driver or bios firmware update, and after applying and testing that firmware, there is real no guarantee that things will get better or worse when applied in Production.

It is really a crap shoot. LSI. I have not see the same issue.


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## mav@ (Jan 12, 2010)

Adaptec SAS RAID on my last work started to randomly die. Newer firmware release notes just documented the fact of possible RAID firmware hang on RAID10 under FreeBSD with both drivers. Haven't seen resolution yet.


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## FLAGEL (Jan 13, 2010)

Thank you all for your feedback, we couldn't have done it without you! 

So we decided to dump Adaptec and go with eight LSI MegaRAID SAS 9260-8i, much thanks to mfi and mfiutil. We also looked at Areca ARC-1680ix-12 but there were some things that make the LSI better suited for us. Better hardware specs, more open source friendly, more promising management and passive cooling. Now, I'm not saying Areca is bad, far from it, had we been looking for hardware-RAID it would have been a much tougher pick so anyone who might be reading this and thinking of buying LSI or Areca, they are both good.


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## phoenix (Jan 13, 2010)

Be sure to post back on how well these cards work, how hot-plugging drives works, etc.  We're looking into these as well for our storage servers.  No point getting multiple $1200 16-port 3Ware cards when multiple ~$300 8-port cards will do the trick.


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## FLAGEL (Jan 13, 2010)

phoenix said:
			
		

> Be sure to post back on how well these cards work, how hot-plugging drives works, etc.  We're looking into these as well for our storage servers.  No point getting multiple $1200 16-port 3Ware cards when multiple ~$300 8-port cards will do the trick.



I will let you all know once I get the time to fool around a bit with them. Maybe later on someday I'll write a longer howto/guide as well on what one should have in mind with ZFS.


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