I'm pretty sure that is a FakeRAID/HostRAID card. If you need real hardware RAID performance then invest in a supported real hardware RAID. Otherwise software RAID is likely to be a lot more reliable.

Tried noacpi thank you fro the suggestion. No joy. It booted pretty much the same as it did before which was slow but still missing the raid card. (did manage to get a dmesg off of it) Demesg from noacpi Kernel parameter

Switched to acpi=off I eventually had to hit the reset key on this one. I got as far as setting the host name but then was stuck with

Started getting scsi8: reset failed
Started getting scsi8: reset failed
scsi 8:0:0:0 rejecting I/O to offline device
scsi 8:0:0:0 rejecting I/O to offline device
INFO: task scsi_scan_9:379 blocked for more than 120 seconds
“echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_sec” disables this message
INFO: task modprobe:887 blocked for more than 120 seconds
“echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_sec” disables this message

this parameter is not bootable.

Also tried noapci. This also has a lot of scsi time outs. Scsi5 is resetting this time. Some of the stuff I'm getting on the screen
udevd[88]: worker [210] unexpectedly returned with status 0x0100
udevd[88]: worker [210] failed while handling '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.5/host4/target4:0:0/4:0:0:0'

I get several of these lines with different devices listed. Finally it ends with several scsi5: reset failed. I finally hit reset on the box.

Any other suggestions would be most welcome.

I see an ACPI conflict in DMESG, suggesting usage of an ACPI driver rather than the native driver. Not sure it concerns the RocketRaid. You might try adding noacpi to he kernel options.

I recently had to rebuild my CentOS 6 file server / mythtv box.

The original kernel installed with CentOS 6.0 2.6.32-71.el6.x86_64 works well with my RocketRaid 3520 raid card. The raid card has firmware 1.3.43.8 which is the latest. Before the rebuild I was running kernel-2.6.32-71.29.1.el6.centos.plus.x86_64 which worked quite well.

Upgrading to the latest kernel (2.6.32-220.4.2) has issues. It takes a long time to boot and there seems to be a lot of SCSI errors. Actually, boot timing seems to be a bit of a crap shoot. If I just let it boot with out interrupting the grub prompt to select a kernel it takes an extremely long time. However, if I interrupt and select the latest kernel it is more likely to boot quicker. However, both times it is missing mounting the file system on the raid card. I have also tried the kernel-2.6.32-220 version but it has the same problem)

I have collected the following information in the hopes that someone can help me
relevant messages from the working kernel
getinfo from the working kernel
dmesg from the working kernel

relevant messages from the failed kernel
dmesg from the failed kernel
getinfo from the failed kernel

I suspect that there is something going on with how SCSI is treated in the newer kernels. In the failed kernel there is a messages line that has the following error
Feb 23 18:06:55 banryu kernel: scsi5: firmware not ready

The failed kernel is also missing a driver line in messages that the working kernel has
FAILED
Feb 23 18:06:55 banryu kernel: dracut: rd_NO_DM: removing DM RAID activation
Feb 23 18:06:55 banryu kernel: dracut: rd_NO_MD: removing MD RAID activation
Feb 23 18:06:55 banryu kernel: RocketRAID 3xxx/4xxx Controller driver v1.6 (090910)

WORKING
Feb 23 17:40:22 banryu kernel: dracut: rd_NO_DM: removing DM RAID activation
Feb 23 17:40:22 banryu kernel: dracut: rd_NO_MD: removing MD RAID activation
Feb 23 17:40:22 banryu kernel: RocketRAID 3xxx/4xxx Controller driver v1.6 (090910)
Feb 23 17:40:22 banryu kernel: scsi9 : RocketRAID 3xxx/4xxx Controller driver

Can someone advise as to how to get the raid card to work with the new kernel version?

Thank You