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

LSI Corporation | January 2011 Page 5
MegaRAID SAS Device Driver Installation User Guide Chapter 1: Overview | Driver Description
Chapter 1
This chapter provides an overview of the drivers for the MegaRAID® SAS RAID
controllers and contains the following sections:
 Section 1.1, Driver Description
 Section 1.2, Driver Names
Subsequent chapters in this manual provide detailed installation instructions for the
operating systems. Use the latest updates provided by the operating system
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 operating
systems.
To use the controller with these operating systems, you must install software drivers.
LSI provides software drivers for the following operating systems:
 Microsoft
®
Windows
®
2000, Windows XP, Windows XP x64, Windows Server 2003
(x86), Windows Server 2003 (x64), and Windows Vista
 Novell
®
NetWare
®
 Red Hat
®
Linux™
 SuSE
®
SLES
 SCO
®
OpenServer
®
and SCO UnixWare
®
 FreeBSD
®
 Solaris®
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 and 3.0 Gb/s SATA II performance to host adapter,
workstation, and server designs. The controllers support internal and external storage
devices, which allows you to use a system that supports enterprise-class SAS and
desktop-class SATA II drives.
The SAS controllers integrate eight high-performance SAS/SATA II 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 3.0 Gb/s SATA II link rates.
The SAS RAID controllers support the SAS protocol as described in the Serial Attached
SCSI Standard, version 1.1. The controllers also support the Serial ATA II (SATA II) protocol
defined by the Serial ATA specification, version 1.0a. SATA II is an extension to SATA 1.0a.
Overview