Okay, I had made sure I had the latest and greatest firmware before our array went hot. About the only thing is that we have version SN05 on all our drives. The array has been running without fail for months now, so I'm tentative to apply a new firmware when we've had no indication of a failure. Here's hoping!
Well, you should be fine, then. But, if you ever want to reformat your array for another reason, you might consider updating the firmware. But, you shouldn't bother bringing down a production system for a hard-drive firmware update if you aren't having problems.
BUT DO UPDATE THE ARECA FIRMWARE!!!!!! AS SOON AS POSSIBLE! If you are dropping lots of drives from your raidsets under areca and high loads, it is likely because your areca firmware is old and has the time-out bug.
Yeah I just double checked. Both of the Sans we run are on the latest Areca firmware by date. I had made sure 2 months ago when I built them that they had the latest firmwares, as I knew it could be ages before we move them up to a new one. I remember the trouble with the SN04, mainly how it affected the 1.5TB drives. I had one that was affected, but it wasn't in a RAID array. Updated the firmware anyhow though . Thanks for the replies man!
BTW, updating the areca firmware is a piece of cake. You can upload the firmware to the areca raid's webgui and it will be applied on the next restart. The arecas have a dual-firmware, so it won't get bricked in case something happens while it is uploading the new firmware.
I think that the Areca controller is better than the adaptec becase of the out of band mgmt.
But the Adaptec card supports RAID5EE + 1EE. Lastly, the Adapec HBA takes FOREVER to boot!
Oh yeah, you can even update all the firmware on your drives using the Areca controller. But you have to have the latest SAS firmware for the controller. Managing Areca firmware is a pain though because you have so many different components (e.g. BIOS, firmware, SAS)
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