RocketRAID 3560 vs RocketRAID 3540

[ogregev]

FreeBSD 8.2 now supports RocketRAID 3520 and 3540 controllers. These are 8 and 16 drives respectively. The 3560 is a 24 drive variant of the same controller.

All three controllers are built off the same hardware and use the same drivers (through FreeBSD 7.2) from Highpoint-Tech's website.

Shouldn't that mean that support for the 3560 is built-in?

I ask because I have the 3560 board and I'm trying to get it working. My last attempt was several months ago and I think was based on FreeBSD 8.0

Does anyone know or know where to ask? The card is WAY to expensive to replace with lesser cards at this point.

 

[Elshar]

I would try on one of the FBSD ML's. Probably -hardware, although -questions is also very busy, so you'll probably get some good info there. Otherwise, maybe -drivers, although it's more of a "I'm writing a driver" than a "Does this/can this device work" list.

Also, there's the forums and the irc channel (##FreeBSD on freenode).

 

[alexwill22]

I had the same 3560 card and for some reason freenas doesn't like it. I was able to manually load the drivers for the card and freenas was able to see it. But, it would not see individual drives unless I did a raid or jbod. If you want to use zfs on it you are wasting your time.

I sold mine and I brought a lsi 9211 8i and 9200 8e they both work flawlessly with freenas 8 and the zfs file system

 

[ogregev]

I had the same 3560 card and for some reason freenas doesn't like it. I was able to manually load the drivers for the card and freenas was able to see it. But, it would not see individual drives unless I did a raid or jbod. If you want to use zfs on it you are wasting your time.

I don't plan on using ZFS anyway (that's why I bought a Raid-6 card). So do you mean you had to build the raid arrays first in the bios?

 

[alexwill22]

Yes, then you have to add the driver during the install of freenas, which is a pain in the a$$.

But there are issues with the 3560. I keep losing raid because the card keep breaking the raid on random drives. The email alerts didn't work and I think the spin down option wasn't working. This was happening on freenas, windows 2008, and unbuntu server. I used the lastest firmware and still it was no good. Maybe I had a bad card.

 

[rosswaters]

I have the 3530 (12 Port) and it is a no go for FreeBSD.

It is super fast with Ubuntu server 11 with RAID6 and 9 5400RPM 2TB drives from Samsung. I was hoping I could deploy one fro a FreeNAS setup but I will have to think of another use for it.