IBM x-series servers are shipped with Adaptec HostRAID, that supports RAID 0/1/10. It turns out that this "RAID" is regular AIC-7902B U320 SCSI controller, and RAID functionality is provided in driver (=software RAID!), i.e. you can use aic79xx driver and see all of hard disk separately, no matter how you've configured your "RAID" using Adaptec BIOS utility.
And here comes the fun part - If you want use your disks as RAID, you have two options:
- Use general linux md driver - this looks like preffered solution, since I do not know how good that proprietary Adaptec driver (see below) is tested.
- Use mystical a320raid driver "provided" by Adaptec. This driver is published under 'adaptec' license, i.e. its not OpenSource driver. Moreover, Adaptec does not publicly provide this driver for 2.6.x. kernels even in binary form. As far as I saw, SUSE SLES 9 and Mandrake provide this driver for 2.6.x kernels, but they can not be freely downloaded (and no src.rpm as well).
The bottom line is - HostRAID RAID solution announced on IBM x-series server (and surely many others) is a software RAID solution, unless you install additional hardware in special slot (IBM ServerRAID-7k I think)
Some links on the subject:
SUSE discussionMandrake rpm pageHave sweet nightmares...