How to get RocketRaid 2720 to work with RHEL / CentOS 6

It is not a problem to reload the OS at this point.

You're screwed.  They don't give you source code so they are precompiled for specific kernels and distributions.  

By the way, you sure as heck better have enterprise class disks with this.  The desktop SATA drives don't have TLER and this controller requires drives with such a feature.   Run desktop drives in anything but a RAID1 or RAID10 then you can pretty much kiss your data goodbye in event of a few successive read errors.

Actually the sad part is Fedora 20 boots in the Live CD and sees the disks on the controller. For the disks I"m using intel SSDs and Seagate Barracuda disks.

Exactly, but your data won't be safe.

So basically I am screwed — keeping this open just in case a new idea comes forth.

The drives are RAID5 in a UFS partition so it should be a bit safe. Is anything truly safe? I was going to try and have the data in a ZFS partition hens the use of the FreeNAS OS, but it was too slow. Even when using SSDs for the cache and logs.

ZFS is as safe as you can get. I strongly recommend doing that.  This is what I use.  P.S.  If ZFS is slow, then you must not be doing something right.  Make sure AHCI is enabled and your controller isn't doing some sort of fake-RAID and/or disables NCQ.    You want your basic plain vanilla $20 SATA port controller.

Using FreeNAS or Intel Solaris 11?

Intel Solaris  or OpenIndiana Solaris 11.

I have the same issue, but seems to be possible...

I posted an issue at HighPoints site and got the source only took a couple of hours for the support to respond so we might not be screwed....

I'm not that familiar with building drivers and it's night time here in Sweden so I probably go to bed know, but if someone is good at this I attach the source here and would be very glad to see if someone posted a compiled version!!!


This was my posted issue, and further down you can see HighPoints answer...

Me:
Problem Description
BIOS/Firmware Version: 1.5
Driver Version: rr272x_1x-rhel_centos-6u3-x86_64-v1.5.13.0327.tgz
WebGUI Version: WebGUI-Linux-v2.1.5-130409.tgz
RAID Configure:       Planning Raid 5
Operating System: CentOS 6.5
Serial No: 1334M2P022427
Purchase Date: 2014-01-16
Purchase From:
Motherboard Model:
System BIOS Version:
System memory size:
HDD Model: Seagate NAS Drive ST4000VN000, Intel SSD SSDSC2BW120A401
HDD Firmware version:
Data RAID Or Boot RAID: Data Raid
External Enclosure(make and model): HP ProLiant N54L G7 MicroServer
PM(port multiplier) Chip:


When running rhel-install-step1.sh it says "Error to extract driver."
Isn't the driver included in modules.cgz, 6.5 has been around for a while 7 is about to come...

------------------------------------------

HighPoint:
Dear customer the Linux driver package you downloaded support CentOS 6.3, not CentOS 6.5

For the RocketRAID 2720SGL to support CentOS 6.5 requires building a binary driver using the Linux open source software package.

Attached in this reply is the latest Linux open source software package that you can use to compile a new binary driver to support CentOS 6.5

Regards

HighPoint Support Team

Not able to upload file cause of the extension filter....

There is really no practical way for somebody to walk you through building device drivers for a different kernel.  This is not just a recompile.  You will have to make changes to the source code, scripts, Makefiles, and perhaps some LINUX daemons and loggers. Even then, no guarantee it will work, or won't just corrupt data in event of a read failure.

Really, just give up and use what they support.   If it was a simple matter of a recompile, HighTech would have don't it themselves just to avoid the support calls.

For all you know there are changes in the kernel that break fundamental features of the driver and even result in data loss.   Maybe firmware needs to be modified? That isn't unusual.

They're supporting it and it has been tested according to their support.

Attachment: RR272x_1x_RHEL_CentOS_6u5_x86_64_v1.5.3_14_01_28.tgz

Dear customer, attached in this reply is the CentOS 6.5 binary driver, please try again and let us know the results.

Regards

HighPoint Support Team

Which config would you recommend on a general purpose data filesystem with movies, pics, docs etc:
Raid5 + Xfs or jfs or ext4
Or maybe install zfs and use
Jbod+Zfs
Lvn in any case a good idea?
Integrity stands higher than performance with data.
Os disk I'm thinking one or maybe two mirrored intel 530 series 120gb ssds.
Data disks are 4×4TB Seagate Nas drives and the os is obviously CentOS 6.5 and  a rr2720sgl and an ups.

Sincerely
Johan

I was having a look at btrfs, seems like there's been some progress. Have you guys any input on this. Do I dare to use it for my data partition?

"The filesystem disk format is no longer unstable, and it's not expected to change unless there are strong reasons to do so. If there is a format change, file systems with a unchanged format will continue to be mountable and usable by newer kernels."

https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/

Sincerely
Johan

Can you post the path for the Highpoint drivers. It looks like it wasn't passed in with your post. When I go to their driver page ( http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/CS-PCI-E_2_0_x8_Configuration.html ) it is still just the old drivers.

Thank you

They aren't available on the web yet what I know, and the file upload service doesn't accept it. I need your e-mail adress or something or else you have to get the file from highpoint support...

Small point of order here, unless the file is put in the public domain, you don't have the right to host it w/o the permission of the owners of the intellectual property.

grabbing it now. I hope to install it this weekend — then we can close this puppy out. It would be so much easier for the vendor to have posted this file for their own product them selves.