Why does a hardware raid need a driver?

Question

RAID

Fake raids (for example, those on regular motherboards) do not provide any benefit when installing regular Ubuntu. Combine disks into arrays, do not combine them, in the operating system they will still be seen as ordinary separate devices.

Intuitively, it seems that the iron raid controller, being inserted between the motherboard and the disk, completely taking over the calculations, should do everything transparently for the system accessing the motherboard with I / O operations. However, on the website of every self-respecting manufacturer for controllers, it is proposed to download a driver for all kinds of variations of operating systems.

It is clear that a driver can, for example, help to manage and monitor from within the system itself, and not from the BIOS, but are these drivers created only for such needs?

Will a hardware raid controller work without installing any drivers?

Answer 1

because raid is an independent piece of iron. And why is a driver needed for some kind of overwhelmed zvukovuhi, but not for a raid?
The answer to the last question is no, it won't. In the case of Linux, the corresponding drivers are usually included in the kernel, Windows users do not indulge in such a luxury.
But even in the case of Linux, it sometimes makes sense to build a specific version of the kernel module recommended by the vendor.

Answer 2

xen is installed via aptitude on standard debian, from the usual repositories. so install debian, drivers for most adapters will be out of the box. well, and put xen on it already through aptitude. Further actions I think are beyond the scope of your question :)