Avago Technologies MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i - Manual (Page 5)

LSI Corporation
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MegaRAID SAS Device Driver Installation User Guide
December 2012
Chapter 1: Overview
Driver Description
Chapter 1: Overview
This chapter provides an overview of the operating system (OS) drivers for the MegaRAID® SAS RAID controllers.
Subsequent chapters in this document provide detailed installation instructions for the OSs. Use the latest
updates provided by the OS manufacturer, and review the readme file that accompanies the driver for any
updated information.
1.1 Driver Description
You can install the MegaRAID SAS controller in any IBM AT-compatible computer that has a PCI Express local bus. The
RAID controller can run under various OSs.
To use the controller with these OSs, you must install software drivers. LSI provides software drivers for the
following OSs:
 Microsoft® Windows®
 Red Hat® Linux™
 SuSE® Linux Enterprise Server (SLES®)
 VMware®
 FreeBSD®
 Solaris™
 XenServer®
 Debian®
 OVM®
 Fedora®
 CentOS®
1.1.1 Driver Functions
MegaRAID provides drivers for the MegaRAID SAS RAID controllers, which bring up to 6.0 Gb/s Serial Attached SCSI
performance and 6.0 Gb/s SATA III performance to host adapter, workstation, and server designs. The controllers
support internal and external storage devices, which let you use a system that supports enterprise-class SAS and
desktop-class SATA III drives.
The SAS controllers integrate eight high-performance SAS/SATA III PHYs and a PCI Express bus master DMA core. Each
of the eight PHYs is capable of 6.0 Gb/s SAS link rates, and 6.0 Gb/s SATA III link rates.
The SAS RAID controllers support the SAS protocol as described in the Serial Attached SCSI Standard, version 2.0, and
the Serial ATA III (SATA III) protocol defined by the Serial ATA specification, version 3.0. SATA III is an extension to
SATA 2.0.
The drivers perform these functions:
 They support the PCI Express protocol.
 They support multiple RAID storage adapters (RSAs).
 They provide the ability to see newly configured logical drives in the configuration software utility without
rebooting the system.
 They permit the random deletion of logical drives that were created by using MegaRAID Storage Manager (refer
to the MegaRAID SAS Software User Guide for more information).
 They support the use of the remaining array capacity by MegaRAID Storage Manager.