I’ve just submitted “Leverage LSI to Open Source MegaCli” to the Dell IdeaStorm website:
Dell makes some awesome and affordable hardware. Many new Dell machines have the PERC 5/i SAS RAID controller, which is a rebranded LSI MegaRAID SAS.
LSI makes some nice RAID cards. Dell likes LSI. Dell made a deal with LSI to provide the chips for their fancy new PERC 5/i cards.
We buy machines with these cards in them. We need to monitor our RAIDs, rebuild them, and do all manner of other maintenance tasks. We do not expect LSI to provide perfect tools. LSI is a hardware vendor, and it’s understandable that they provide terrible *software*. What is NOT understandable, though, is why LSI’s terrible tools are closed source.
What is further incomprehensible is why Dell is willing to accept this situation on behalf of their enterprise customers. Has anyone from Dell even tried to use the tools LSI provides, and Dell recommends, to manage a RAID array on Linux?
MegaCli is the worst command-line utility I have ever seen, bar none. But, we don’t expect LSI to make it better, we expect LSI to OPEN SOURCE it. That way we software professionals can spend our own time to make them better. We need better tools. We are willing to work for free. Give us the source, or give us good documentation, but give us something.
We’re willing to provide infinite amounts of value to both Dell and LSI. Dell has enough clout with LSI to make this happen. Please make it happen.
Signed,
Jeremy Cole
Open Source Database Guy
Please go there and “promote” this if you care about Dell and RAID!
Jeremy Cole 
MySQL and the The Death of RAID « Kevin Burton’s NEW FeedBlog
Rdb Notes · MySQL and the The Death of RAID
I’ve just created a new project on sourceforge for code I wrote for Linux to directly query PERCs. This allows dumping the configuration, inspecting error counts, initiating device self-tests (very useful), inspecting SCSI log sense pages (media error counts, disk temperature sensors, self-test logs), and performing general health checks on PERCs from the PERC2 through PERC5 models. It may work for other LSI megaraid adapters as well, but this is untested. This code should be able to serve as a basis for replacing dellmgr and MegaCli if you wish to contribute. Currently it only queries adapters; it does not have reconfiguration features.
I use this code to perform nightly health checks on my PERCs so I can get advance notice of any media errors or battery problems, and I receive a nightly email containing the current RAID config for documentation purposes.
The code should be considered beta code, especially the SAS support, but please try it out and let me know how it works for you. It builds on RHEL 3, 4, 5, and Debian Etch, possibly on other targets without too much trouble.
The sourceforge project is new, but there is a detailed README and fairly explicit help in the program, and there is a document describing usage and features on the sourceforge project, along with some screenshots of output. The URL for the sourceforge project is:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/megactl
I know this is old, but please tell me they have open sourced it, or there is an open source solution somewhere. StorCLI is the biggest piece of garbage. It has trouble just recognizing controllers a lot of the time. While MegaRaid at least is consistent in that regard. Have you found anything that could be of help. I have to work in windows unfortunately because… ya know work… but there’s got to be something out there. All my boss is asking is to replicate the LOCATE command in MegaRaid. I’ve been able to do this with StorCLI, but like I said, it doesn’t recognize all controllers (even when MegaRaid does). It’s frustrating. Did you ever find a solution, or did they ever open source it? Thanks