[OpenIndiana-discuss] Opinions on LSI RAID vs. ZFS

[Aneurin Price]

On 9 October 2013 14:37, Edward Ned Harvey (openindiana)
<openindiana at nedharvey.com> wrote:
>> From: Christopher Chan [mailto:christopher.chan at bradbury.edu.hk]
>> Sent: Tuesday, October 08, 2013 8:42 PM
>>
>> Er...isn't hotswap capability PART of the specs whether the drives are
>> SAS or SATA? I can do this on a cheap desktop motherboard but you cannot
>> on a server board with getting a HBA?
>
> Maybe you're using a different bios, or maybe you're hotswapping like for like drives that coincidentally work in your situation or something, but ...
>
> In BIOS, I have the option to enable/disable SATA port 0, 1,2,3.  If the port is enabled and nothing connected, it throws and error during POST.  If something is connected, it's identified as a 1TB or whatever drive, and presented to the OS as c1t1d1 or whatever.  Later if I disconnect that drive while the OS is running, the OS still thinks c1t1d1 exists, but if I try to access it, I'll get an IO error.  If it were truly hot plug, then the OS should get a drive disconnected signal, and c1t1d1 should not exist anymore.

Is this in IDE emulation mode per-chance? If your controller acts this
way in AHCI mode, it's defective and should be replaced, but most
BIOSes default to IDE emulation where hotplugging is not supported
(although it will probably work in practice, if you can persuade your
OS to rescan the hardware).

I hotplug SATA with wild abandon, even on the nastiest of cheap tat
controllers - including the kind that comes as a PCI card for a few
pounds and is bloody awful - and I've never seen one where hotplug
wasn't completely reliable.

Your point about taking you data into your own hands is valid, but if
you're using hardware that you suspect to be that monumentally crap,
you're already juggling eggs.