[geeks] In which 3Ware can bite me

[Phil Stracchino]

Last May or so, I acquired a shiny new-to-me dual-Xeon rackmount box
with an array of 12 300GB SATA disks on a 3Ware 9500 controller.  By
June, I'd added a mirrored pair of 40GB (the smallest I could find) 2.5"
SATA boot disks, and was starting to install Solaris 10 on it.  Except
Solaris 10 couldn't see the 9500 card.

Last June, 3Ware told me they were working on a Solaris 10 driver for
9500-series controllers, and that it'd be released late July to early
August.  July came and went.  So did August, and September.  In
September, they said "Real soon now."  October came and went.  And
November, and December.  In January they told me, "We have a roadmap for
releasing the drivers by the end of first quarter."  February came with
no release, then finally late last week came a driver release
announcement in the mail.  For 9650SE and 9690SA series controllers
only.  For OpenSolaris.

I just called them.  Yes, that's the only driver they're releasing.  And
at no point during the past eight months did it occur to anybody at
3Ware, as I kept asking about the progress of 9500-series controller
drivers for Solaris 10, to inform me that they'd end-of-lifed the 9500
series last July.


I'm going to query whether there's any kind of an upgrade path from the
9500, but I don't expect much beyond "Well, you could buy a new 9650 or
9690 at full price."

Blow it out your ass, 3Ware.


-- 
  Phil Stracchino, CDK#2     DoD#299792458     ICBM: 43.5607, -71.355
  alaric at caerllewys.net   alaric at metrocast.net   phil at co.ordinate.org
         Renaissance Man, Unix ronin, Perl hacker, Free Stater
                 It's not the years, it's the mileage.