Adaptec Storage Manager experiences
Why this article?
Well – I collect a few experiences with adaptec controllers, and they are getting more and more. I want to show – and remember for all this curious problems.
Adaptec Storage Manager in different versions
I use two different controllers in one server. One 1220SA and one 2820SA. The 1220SA hosts two 80GB SATA drives in RAID0 as boot device, the 2820SA hosts eight 1TB drives as RAID6 drive.
So there are two recommended ASM versions on adaptec homepage. For the 2820SA it is 5.20.00 (17414) and for the 1220SA it is 6.50.00 (18584).
So I tried first the 6.50.00 thinking it is the newer one and will do a good job.
But when trying to create a new RAID6 array with the 2820SA, it fails after a few seconds with device state „IMPACTED“. The drive has less size then it should have and it could not be partitioned. By the way it causes an error when logging in after reboot of computer.
So I tried the older version. Here none of the upper problems occurred. But therefor the 1220SA could not find any drives or logical device. The partition is present, the computer boots up normal and you can use the drive, but you can not administer.
Summit
With the one ASM version you can administer the first controller, with the other the second one. You are not able to administer both with the same software.
Congratulations to Adaptec. This is a masterpiece.