On 6/28/23 16:55, Philippe Andersson wrote:
Hello Aaron,
Many thanks for your reply, first of all.
On 27/06/2023 10:33, Aaron Lauterer wrote:
AFAIK, VROC has two variants, actual HW RAID and so-called fake RAID. If
it is the fake RAID variant, it will be ignored and the single disks
should be shown in the installer.
I don't know whether this "fake RAID vs real RAID" still applies to the
recent BIOS/UEFI firmwares.
We recently tested (at work) an HP Z4 Gen5 workstation with 2 NVMEs
configured in RAID-1 through VROC, and the openSUSE 15.4 we installed
there had no issue seeing the resulting LUN. Even better, we could use
regular 'mdadm' to monitor the state of the array (although 'mdadm'
could not modify its configuration, obviously -- that can only be done
through the BIOS/UEFI utilities).
And that is fake RAID AFAIU. The BIOS telling the OS how the RAID should be
configured. On Linux, that usually means MD RAID. On Windows, a special driver
might be necessary. So in the end, a BIOS configured software RAID running on
the OS level.
On a real RAID, the OS would only see a single disk and would not have any idea
about it. Except that the disk might not provide infos like a physical disk
would in regard to vendor, model and serial number.
Proxmox VE does not come with mdadm. The main reasoning behind this decision can
be found in the links here: https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/show_bug.cgi?id=4573#c6
But for this to work, you need some so-called "hardware enablement"
module loaded in the kernel, that I believe is called 'intel_rst' (not
100% sure -- we no longer have the test workstation, unfortunately). If
that module is also bundled with the kernel that ships with Proxmox 8, I
don't see why it should not work there as well.
On all the reports we have seen over the last years, users reported that the
disks were shown separately even though they configured the RAID in the BIOS.
The intel_rst kernel module is not loaded by default on Proxmox VE.
If it is an actual HW RAID, it should only show a single block device
for each RAID to the OS.
On the HP Z4 Gen5 workstation we evaluated, that's exactly what happened.
I don't know the intel_rst kernel module. Maybe it hides the actual disks used
for the MD raid. I would have been interested in the output of the following
commands to confirm that suspicion:
mdadm -D /dev/mdX
lsblk
ls -l /dev/disk/by-*/
In consumer boards, the chances of VROC being the fake RAID variant are
quite high.
Maybe or maybe not, but I'd rather make sure before buying :- >
But why not ZFS with mirrored (maybe even multiple mirrored disk, RAID
10 like)?
I'm already quite familiar with md-raid + LVM (not on Proxmox,
obviously, but on openSUSE), but I never used ZFS. Although the server
we're discussing is a home server, it's still a "production" home server
and I don't want to face the learning curve when things go south. Based
on what I read, ZFS sounds interesting, but I'd rather experiment with
it on a test machine first.
As long as you go with ZFS pools made up of a mirror, or multiple mirrors, there
isn't much that can go wrong or result in unpleasant surprises when used as VM
storage. For more details, you can check out
https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/pve-admin-guide.html#sysadmin_zfs_raid_considerations
Cheers, Aaron
In case of a disk failure, the handling of it is much nicer and if you
can hotplug the disks, you don't even need to power down the machine.
The budget I plan to spend on the replacement server won't allow for
hotplug, I'm afraid, but in terms of disk failure handling, it's hard to
beat true HW RAID in my experience.
Cheers,
Ph. A.
Cheers,
Aaron
On 6/27/23 09:50, Philippe Andersson wrote:
Hello List,
Quick question. I'm currently looking into upgrading my home Proxmox
server (using PC components meant for the home market, for cost
reasons), and getting a "real" hardware RAID proposition under these
conditions turns out to be quite an ordeal. Intel RST/VROC seems to be
the only available option.
Can anyone on this list please confirm whether these technologies are
supported by the latest Proxmox VE installer/kernel ?
Thanks in advance.
Ph. A.
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*Philippe Andersson*
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IBA Particle Therapy |
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