[TriLUG] Linux & the Adaptec 2410SA Serial ATA RAID card

[Aaron S. Joyner]

I've worked with both the 2410SA, the Promise Serial ATA card, and a 
Silicon Image chipset on the Intel Dual Xeon Server boards.  The short 
answer, is if you're not using a board with onboard SATA, you'll be 
fine.  The Adaptec cards are based on the Silicon Image chipset, with 
significantly modified and improved firmware.  The Intel motherboard I 
was dealing with *would not post* with the 2410SA card installed.  I 
just gave up the ghost and wouldn't work.  The Promise card, on the 
other hand, worked reasonably well, once you make sure you have the 
right drivers from Promise's site (which is actually trickier than it 
sounds).  Ensure you have the appropriate version, either FastTrack or 
not - the difference is whether the card has built on raid or not, and 
the drivers are not compatible.  In my opinion, the 2410 card was far 
superior to the Promise card in terms of setup and simple use.  On the 
other hand, it simply wouldn't work on the motherboard in question, so 
it was not an option.  For the record, I believe this to be the fault of 
the onboard chipset not playing nice, as Adaptec does support multiple 
2410SA's in the same box, with out problem.

Now having said all that...  Under RH 3 AS, the performance of the 
Promise chipset was quite sub-par.  It was so bad, we actually ripped 
out the SATA solution and went with SCSI.  It could be argued that the 
SATA drives were simply not up to par (they weren't as good as the 
equivalent SCSI drives, in terms of mechanical performance - seek time, 
rotational speed, etc).  Although, that would not account for all of the 
difference in performance, which was unfortunate.  The drivers were 
blamed, and no one looked back.  If the ultimate in performance is your 
goal, SATA is just not quite there yet.  On the other hand, if you're 
willing to sacrifice a little speed for the convenience of native hot 
swapping, lower cost, and more convenient availability - SATA is not an 
all-together bad option.

On the other hand, if you'd like a take on that chipset from someone 
with intimate knowledge of it, look no further than Soren, who worked 
out the bugs in the FreeBSD driver,

>More errata fixing for the SiI3112A disaster chip:
>
>Serialize access to the SATA channels, the chip messes up if
>both channels are used at the same time.
>
>The SiI3112 hereby takes the price as the most crappy SATA chip in
>existance by a significant amount.
>
>My advise to our userbase is to avoid this chip like the plague...
>

That's straight from the CVS comment log for the driver on FreeBSD.  
Generally, I've  had good experience with it, but perhaps the problem he 
describes is precisely why the performance is sub-par.  My performance 
testing was done on the onboard silicon image chipset on that Intel 
board, and on the Promise chipset.  Unfortunately, I was unable to do 
any testing on the Adaptec card.  I'd love to have the opportunity to do 
further investigation, or hear the results of your evaluation.  I'd 
particularly love to hear that Adaptec has solved this problem, and that 
the 2410SA works marvelously, unfortunately I'm just not the person to 
say that yet.

I literally spent more than 2 working days straight on this problem when 
it came to my attention.  If you have further questions, feel free to 
ask and perhaps I can provide more insight.

Aaron S. Joyner

1. 
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/sys/dev/ata/ata-chipset.c#rev1.50

Jamie Livingston wrote,

>Subject: [TriLUG] Linux & the Adaptec 2410SA Serial ATA RAID card
>
>Does anyone on the list have experience with the Adaptec 2410SA Serial ATA
>RAID card under
>any build of Linux?
>
>I'm evaluating hardware and am looking for any comments based on direct
>experience...
>
>Thanks,
>
>Jaimie
>  
>