On Fri, 25 Aug 2000, Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom wrote:

> anyone know which brand of RAID controller Dell servers ship with? (the low-end single-channel one).
> the slippery salesdroid I spoke to didn't seem to know what he was talking about.
> 
> they must be supported under Linux, because Dell ships RH6.2 on their servers; but the question is *how well is it supported*?
> Here at Real-Time we like Mylex controllers, because they're manageable through a /proc filesystem interface (great for remote diagnostics). no other controller has that, As Far As We Know.
> 
> anyone have good/bad/indifferent experiences with Dell servers?
> 
> Carl Soderstrom

The Dell server I have (PowerEdge 2400) has a PERC RAID controller. It is
made by Adaptec and as far as I know, the driver is still binary only.  
This limits your ability to upgrade your kernel when you feel like it
since you have to have a perc.o module that matches your kernel.

However, it is supported rather well.  It works nicely.  It doesn't
interface via /proc though.  It has a command-line utility that allows you
to configure your raid setup.

I've alreay sent one letter to Dell/Adaptec complaining about the binary
only thing.  I haven't checked recently that they released the source yet
but I have heard rumers that they were going to.

Overall I'm happy with it but the binary only thing took me by complete
suprise (and not a very happy suprise either).  I ordered it with Dell's
RedHat 6.2 pre-installed so I can't tell you how much fun it was to
install.  

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