[ILUG] Hardware RAID controllers under Debian

[conor at discuskeeping.com]

> a dual channel SCSI U320 array. We were quoted for an LSI dual channel
> MegaRAID 320-2X controller but Debian support for it seems to be
> limited. I'm looking now at an Adaptec equivalent (2230SLP), also dual
> channel. Any idea what the Debian support for either card is? And, in
> particular, monitoring of hardware RAID 5 on it. Adaptec seems to offer
> a Linux kernel driver for it but there's no sign really of the
> monitoring software for non SuSE/Redhat distros.

The clue is in the name, its an LSI card, not an adaptec one.
And it is supported by the megaraid2 driver.

> The Adaptec card claims to support Online Capacity Expansion. I'm taking
> this to mean I can extend the size of a RAID 5 volume (for instance) but
> I can't get any detailed help on it without buying the damn card. Am I
> wrong about this idea?

Again, its not adaptec, but yes it can do it. There is barely a 
controller that
cannot these days, a real array controller I'm talking about :-0

You need to choose your filesystem well, do you need online expansion of not?

> Cheers,
> Cian

Regards
Conor.