Solaris not fully supporting SATA?
It would seem that SATA port multipliers and Solaris don't mix. Or, at the very least, the Sil3124 card with Sil3726 port replicators used in the Norco DS-1220 external sata chassis don't mix.
Solaris 10 U3 recognized the Sil3124 card and the 8 drives I have in the chassis. The problem is I can't use the drives in a single ZFS pool (I want RAIDZ2).
It seems if there is a single ZFS pool that uses more than one drive in a port replicator, then the drive will hang and report busy (100 %b in iostat, and occasionally 100 %w and 100 %b at the same time) for about 60 seconds at a time every write.
I have the 8 drives spread across the four sata ports and replicators. Drives are located in slots 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 11, and 12. This corresponds to the DS-1220 replicators and single drives (1-5 is sata port 1, 6-10 is sata port 2, 11 is sata port 3, 12 is sata port 4).
Using this, I am able to create a RAIDZ pool with disks 1, 6, 11, and 12. If I add disks 2, 3, 7, or 8 to the pool I will see periodic drive hangs. I can create a separate mirror pool with drives 2 and 7, and 3 and 8, and both mirror pools will work independently, however the same pool can't use the drives in a striped mirror layout.
As long as I keep each pool separate, so far it appears I can avoid the hung drive syndrome.
So the question now is: Is this a Solaris problem with the Sil3124 card or is this a Sil3124 and Sil3726 specific problem in hardware only?
What other options are there for external SATA chassis that will work with Solaris? At this point I'm not opposed to returning the DS-1220 and using the drives in something else.
Thanks