SC440, Debian and the SAS 5/iR controller (in RAID 1).

[Stan Kaufman]

NADAI MAURIZIO wrote:
> I'm considering the purchase of a Dell SC440, and since RAID 1 is enough
> for my purposes, I'm thinking of getting the SAS 5/iR controller, which
> seems to be just fine for simple mirroring.
>
> My question is: how well is this configuration (SC440 - SAS 5/iR -
> RAID1) supported by Debian?
>   

Software RAID1 with Debian can be set up with the SC440 and the SAS 5/i 
controller. I presume it also works with the SAS 5/iR card, but I can't 
confirm it personally.

> Am I running into a nightmare of
> downloading/backporting/troubleshooting, or is something that a
> "regular" linux sysadmin (but far from Linus himself :) can face without
> the risk of spending nights on this machine?
>   

You need to get the latest 2.6.x install images 
(http://kmuto.jp/debian/d-i/) to boot the box in order to do a network 
install. And supposedly the installer will configure RAID now, but I 
didn't find it to work. Here's what I did:

http://www.epimetrics.com/topics/one-page?page_id=449&topic=Bit%2dhead%20Stuff&page_topic_id=120

> I'll greately appreciate any comment on this.
>   

Good luck!

Stan