Re: Software raid VS hardware raid
My other concern is what happens when one drive goes down if we use gmirror? Is it completelly transparent and bad drive can be hot swapped while server is running and rebuild started? I am thinking now about gpt+gmirror (including boot and swap) Artem Yes. In fact, you can test this by unplugging the data or power cable to a drive while the server is running. I've done this with consumer sata drives and, so far, not had a problem. The server stays up and running and disk access is not interrupted. I can then plug in a new disk and add it to the gmirror and the array rebuilds. I've not tried this with gpt, so I can't comment there. -Modulok- ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Software raid VS hardware raid
30.01.2013 1:01, Warren Block: On Tue, 29 Jan 2013, Artem Kuchin wrote: 29.01.2013 18:57, Warren Block: On Tue, 29 Jan 2013, Artem Kuchin wrote: The Handbook chapter on gmirror talks about the problems with GPT and GEOM metadata. In short: right now, they conflict. It's possible to mirror GPT partitions, but be aware that if you mirror more than one partition on a drive, a rebuild after replacing a drive could thrash the heads as mirrors are rebuilt simultaneously. http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/geom-mirror.html So, gmirror+GPT=conflict on last sector GPT+gmirror = hardrive head kill nice... So, for no more than 2TB disks the best way to go is GMIRROR of the drive +PARTITION on top of it? GPT partitions should work, just limit it to one mirrored partition per drive. Please, clarify what you mean here. Or maybe there is a way to instruct gmirror do rebuild only what i say (manual rebuild) ? 'gmirror configure -n' ? Have not tried it. The trick would be to do that before multiple mirrors start rebuilding, which they will as soon as geom_mirror.ko is loaded. As i understand from the man page -n setup the device not to auto rebuild ever. So, this is probably the thing i want. I need to setup a test system and play with it a bit. Artem ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Software raid VS hardware raid
On 01/28/13 21:43, Artem Kuchin wrote: I am planning to use mirror configuration of two SATA 7200rpm 2TB disks. I personally vote for gmirror in this case; I've used it a lot and found it very good wrt to both performance and robustness. You can spend the extra money you spare on the controller buying good disks; as someone else pointed out don't get desktop-class ones, but 24x7 ones. Just my 2c. bye av. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Software raid VS hardware raid
30.01.2013 18:06, Warren Block: On Wed, 30 Jan 2013, Artem Kuchin wrote: 30.01.2013 1:01, Warren Block: On Tue, 29 Jan 2013, Artem Kuchin wrote: 29.01.2013 18:57, Warren Block: On Tue, 29 Jan 2013, Artem Kuchin wrote: The Handbook chapter on gmirror talks about the problems with GPT and GEOM metadata. In short: right now, they conflict. It's possible to mirror GPT partitions, but be aware that if you mirror more than one partition on a drive, a rebuild after replacing a drive could thrash the heads as mirrors are rebuilt simultaneously. http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/geom-mirror.html So, gmirror+GPT=conflict on last sector GPT+gmirror = hardrive head kill nice... So, for no more than 2TB disks the best way to go is GMIRROR of the drive +PARTITION on top of it? GPT partitions should work, just limit it to one mirrored partition per drive. Please, clarify what you mean here. If only one GPT partition on a drive is mirrored with another GPT partition on another drive, head contention never comes up. There is only one mirror. It does nearly eliminate the usefulness of GPT partitioning. Um... and how can i do that if i have a simple mirror with two drives and want to mirror everything on them? As i understand i will have at least bootable, swap and ufs parttions on those drives, that is 3 partitions at least. Artem ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Software raid VS hardware raid
On Jan 30, 2013, at 8:10 AM, Andrea Venturoli wrote: You can spend the extra money you spare on the controller buying good disks; as someone else pointed out don't get desktop-class ones, but 24x7 ones. Server Class drives buy you some improvement, but my recent experience with Seagate Barracuda ES.2 drives is not that good. I have had 50% of them fail within the 5-year warranty period. My disks run 24x7 and I use ZFS under FreeBSD 9 so I have not lost any data. I have: 2 x Seagate ES.2 250 GB (one has failed) 4 x Seagate ES.2 1 TB (two have failed) 2 x Hitachi UltraStar 1 TB (pre-WD acquisition), no failures, but they are less than 2 years old. They are also noticeably faster than the Seagate ES.2 I just ordered 2 x WD RE4 500 GB, we'll see how those do I go out of my way to purchase disks with a 5-year warranty, they are still out there but you have to look for them. -- Paul Kraus Deputy Technical Director, LoneStarCon 3 Sound Coordinator, Schenectady Light Opera Company ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Software raid VS hardware raid
There seems to be one more advantage to gmirror If i understood correctly gmirror label -v -b split -s 2048 data da0 da1 da2 will create a tripple mirror raid 1, that is triple redundancy, which is hardly available on any hardware raid. Am i correct here? Also, does anyone know how to choose split threshold (-s 2048) correctly ? Artem ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Software raid VS hardware raid
On Wed, 30 Jan 2013, Artem Kuchin wrote: 30.01.2013 18:06, Warren Block: GPT partitions should work, just limit it to one mirrored partition per drive. Please, clarify what you mean here. If only one GPT partition on a drive is mirrored with another GPT partition on another drive, head contention never comes up. There is only one mirror. It does nearly eliminate the usefulness of GPT partitioning. Um... and how can i do that if i have a simple mirror with two drives and want to mirror everything on them? As i understand i will have at least bootable, swap and ufs parttions on those drives, that is 3 partitions at least. If you want to use the same drive for booting, it's possible. Create all three partitions on both drives manually. Then mirror the freebsd-ufs partition only. The contents of the freebsd-boot partition don't change often, and swap does not have to be mirrored. Not that it's easy or convenient, but it's an option. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Software raid VS hardware raid
On Jan 30, 2013, at 10:22 AM, Warren Block wrote: If you want to use the same drive for booting, it's possible. Create all three partitions on both drives manually. Then mirror the freebsd-ufs partition only. The contents of the freebsd-boot partition don't change often, and swap does not have to be mirrored. Note that if you do NOT mirror SWAP, then in the event of a disk failure you will most likely crash when the system tries to swap in some data from the failed drive. If you mirror swap then you do not risk a crash due to missing swap data. -- Paul Kraus Deputy Technical Director, LoneStarCon 3 Sound Coordinator, Schenectady Light Opera Company ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Software raid VS hardware raid
30.01.2013 19:28, Paul Kraus: On Jan 30, 2013, at 10:22 AM, Warren Block wrote: If you want to use the same drive for booting, it's possible. Create all three partitions on both drives manually. Then mirror the freebsd-ufs partition only. The contents of the freebsd-boot partition don't change often, and swap does not have to be mirrored. Note that if you do NOT mirror SWAP, then in the event of a disk failure you will most likely crash when the system tries to swap in some data from the failed drive. If you mirror swap then you do not risk a crash due to missing swap data. yes, that's what i wanted to say. Also, not being able to boot if first disk has some error in boot section or just strangly dead is not an option too. However, i was just thinking, if i use gmirror then bios does not know anything about it. I may set both harddisk as boot disk, but if first disk is brain damaged then bios may just stuck trying to boot from it and will not pass boot attempt to the second disk. I don't know, it depends on bios of course. But this seems to be a disadvantage to a software raid. Artem ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Software raid VS hardware raid
On Wed, 30 Jan 2013, Artem Kuchin wrote: Also, not being able to boot if first disk has some error in boot section or just strangly dead is not an option too. However, i was just thinking, if i use gmirror then bios does not know anything about it. I may set both harddisk as boot disk, but if first disk is brain damaged then bios may just stuck trying to boot from it and will not pass boot attempt to the second disk. I don't know, it depends on bios of course. But this seems to be a disadvantage to a software raid. That's true. The similar situation with hardware RAID is when the controller fails. The metadata is probably specific to that manufacturer and maybe to that model of controller. It's a good idea to get spares, because as Murphy is my witness, in an emergency that controller will not be available in the same town, district, country, or continent. More likely it will have been long discontinued, with no data migration path. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Software raid VS hardware raid
29.01.2013 11:54, Michael Powell: Artem Kuchin wrote: I guess what I'm trying to point out is that low performance wrt software RAID will stem from other things besides just simply consuming a few CPU cycles. Today's CPUs have the cycles to spare. I've been using gmirror for RAID 1 mirrors for a few years now and am happy with this. I have had a few old drives die and the servers stayed up and online. This allowed me to defer the actual drive replacement and not have to drop everything and fight fire. Thank you everyone for replying. I realize that many other things affect the performance, not only the CPU power. For example, disk IO kernel multithreading is one of the things. But i guess in FBSD 9 it is more or less solved. The server is going to be a web server with many sites and with mysql running on it. Nothing really really heavy. Currently with run all this on our own server with 8 cores and 16GB ram and 3ware raid1 and cpu load is about 5% :) Everything is quick and responsive. I hope to see the same on a software raid. I really don't want to deploy ZFS on a new server where all these site need to migrate because i am kind of don't fix it if it is not broken kind of guy. UFS+journaling+softupdates served us well for years and snapshots are available on ufs too. My other concern is what happens when one drive goes down if we use gmirror? Is it completelly transparent and bad drive can be hot swapped while server is running and rebuild started? I am thinking now about gpt+gmirror (including boot and swap) Artem ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Software raid VS hardware raid
Artem Kuchin wrote: [snip] The server is going to be a web server with many sites and with mysql running on it. Nothing really really heavy. Currently with run all this on our own server with 8 cores and 16GB ram and 3ware raid1 and cpu load is about 5% :) Everything is quick and responsive. I hope to see the same on a software raid. The controller would be a slight concern. But for what you've described doing I doubt it will be a big deal. The 3Ware may have a faster processor on it than say a generic onboard built-in. But since all we're talking here is a RAID 1 mirror my guess is it may not be a big enough difference to see. Writes will be just as if you are writing to 1 drive, reads will be faster. Maybe that 5% cpu load turns into 6% or 7%. I really don't want to deploy ZFS on a new server where all these site need to migrate because i am kind of don't fix it if it is not broken kind of guy. UFS+journaling+softupdates served us well for years and snapshots are available on ufs too. I understand; I've only played around with ZFS some on Solaris. I may move in that direction some day, but for now My other concern is what happens when one drive goes down if we use gmirror? Is it completelly transparent and bad drive can be hot swapped while server is running and rebuild started? I am thinking now about gpt+gmirror (including boot and swap) I've never actually hot-swapped one but I can't see any reason why not. You can't use the gmirror remove directive when a drive has failed, but you do a gmirror forget device , swap it, then just do gmirror insert device to insert the replaced drive into the mirror. When everything is working as it should gmirror is mostly 'automatic', e.g. after the insert the rebuild just starts. Main thing I appreciated about this is the server stayed up and online after one drive died. My two servers at home are my testbeds to test out things first before doing stuff to the ones at work. I just installed both to 9.1. The difference now is I've used GPT (gpart) and this is new to me. Previously everything was always fdisk and disklabel. Both these machines are setup on one drive at this point and I haven't yet gotten into the mirroring yet. With the old fdisk/disklabel it was simple to just mirror the entire drive itself (slice). The other approach is to mirror partitions. I think I may need to do this as I think this is the way you have to proceed in order to avoid having gpt and gmirror both trying to claim the last sector on the drive (metadata storage). -Mike ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Software raid VS hardware raid
On Tue, 29 Jan 2013, Artem Kuchin wrote: My other concern is what happens when one drive goes down if we use gmirror? Is it completelly transparent and bad drive can be hot swapped while server is running and rebuild started? I am thinking now about gpt+gmirror (including boot and swap) As far a gmirror is concerned, yes, drives can be removed and new drives inserted while the mirror is running. Hot swap is more of an issue with the hardware. I have not tried it with SATA drives, although I think it should work. The Handbook chapter on gmirror talks about the problems with GPT and GEOM metadata. In short: right now, they conflict. It's possible to mirror GPT partitions, but be aware that if you mirror more than one partition on a drive, a rebuild after replacing a drive could thrash the heads as mirrors are rebuilt simultaneously. http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/geom-mirror.html ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Software raid VS hardware raid
29.01.2013 18:57, Warren Block: On Tue, 29 Jan 2013, Artem Kuchin wrote: The Handbook chapter on gmirror talks about the problems with GPT and GEOM metadata. In short: right now, they conflict. It's possible to mirror GPT partitions, but be aware that if you mirror more than one partition on a drive, a rebuild after replacing a drive could thrash the heads as mirrors are rebuilt simultaneously. http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/geom-mirror.html So, gmirror+GPT=conflict on last sector GPT+gmirror = hardrive head kill nice... So, for no more than 2TB disks the best way to go is GMIRROR of the drive +PARTITION on top of it? Or maybe there is a way to instruct gmirror do rebuild only what i say (manual rebuild) ? Artem ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Software raid VS hardware raid
On Tue, 29 Jan 2013 08:57:31 -0600, Warren Block wbl...@wonkity.com wrote: As far a gmirror is concerned, yes, drives can be removed and new drives inserted while the mirror is running. Hot swap is more of an issue with the hardware. I have not tried it with SATA drives, although I think it should work. The Handbook chapter on gmirror talks about the problems with GPT and GEOM metadata. In short: right now, they conflict. It's possible to mirror GPT partitions, but be aware that if you mirror more than one partition on a drive, a rebuild after replacing a drive could thrash the heads as mirrors are rebuilt simultaneously. http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/geom-mirror.html Why isn't gmirror more intelligent? I hate to use Linux as an example, but mdadm won't simultaneously rebuild multiple RAID sets if they use the same physical providers to prevent this. Could this be added as a feature? Even a sysctl toggle? ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Software raid VS hardware raid
On Tue, 29 Jan 2013, Artem Kuchin wrote: 29.01.2013 18:57, Warren Block: On Tue, 29 Jan 2013, Artem Kuchin wrote: The Handbook chapter on gmirror talks about the problems with GPT and GEOM metadata. In short: right now, they conflict. It's possible to mirror GPT partitions, but be aware that if you mirror more than one partition on a drive, a rebuild after replacing a drive could thrash the heads as mirrors are rebuilt simultaneously. http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/geom-mirror.html So, gmirror+GPT=conflict on last sector GPT+gmirror = hardrive head kill nice... So, for no more than 2TB disks the best way to go is GMIRROR of the drive +PARTITION on top of it? GPT partitions should work, just limit it to one mirrored partition per drive. Or maybe there is a way to instruct gmirror do rebuild only what i say (manual rebuild) ? 'gmirror configure -n' ? Have not tried it. The trick would be to do that before multiple mirrors start rebuilding, which they will as soon as geom_mirror.ko is loaded. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Software raid VS hardware raid
Hello! I have to made a decision on choosing a dedicated server. The problem i see is that while i can find very affordable and good options they do not provide hardware raid or even if they do it is not the best hardware for freebsd. The server base conf is 8core 32gb ram 2.8+ ghz. So, maybe someone has personal experience with both worlds and can tell if it really matters in such configuration if i go for software raid. What are the benefits and what are the negatives of software raid? How much is the performance penalty? I am planning to use mirror configuration of two SATA 7200rpm 2TB disks. Nothing fancy. File system planned is UFS with journaling. Artem ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Software raid VS hardware raid
On 01/28/13 21:43, Artem Kuchin wrote: Hello! I have to made a decision on choosing a dedicated server. The problem i see is that while i can find very affordable and good options they do not provide hardware raid or even if they do it is not the best hardware for freebsd. The server base conf is 8core 32gb ram 2.8+ ghz. So, maybe someone has personal experience with both worlds and can tell if it really matters in such configuration if i go for software raid. What are the benefits and what are the negatives of software raid? How much is the performance penalty? I am planning to use mirror configuration of two SATA 7200rpm 2TB disks. Nothing fancy. File system planned is UFS with journaling. I won't delve into detail here but if the data is important HW RAID is where you want to be. Perhaps you could give us a little more details about what the purpose of the server is? Mission-critical or low cost? Those two tends to be mutually exclusive... We are HP-only but have good experience from LSI as well. Just my $0.02. //per ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Software raid VS hardware raid
On Mon, 28 Jan 2013, Per olof Ljungmark wrote: On 01/28/13 21:43, Artem Kuchin wrote: Hello! I have to made a decision on choosing a dedicated server. The problem i see is that while i can find very affordable and good options they do not provide hardware raid or even if they do it is not the best hardware for freebsd. The server base conf is 8core 32gb ram 2.8+ ghz. So, maybe someone has personal experience with both worlds and can tell if it really matters in such configuration if i go for software raid. What are the benefits and what are the negatives of software raid? How much is the performance penalty? I am planning to use mirror configuration of two SATA 7200rpm 2TB disks. Nothing fancy. File system planned is UFS with journaling. I won't delve into detail here but if the data is important HW RAID is where you want to be. Perhaps you could give us a little more details A problem with HW RAID is that if the controller breaks, you need to get an identical controller to replace it, or the data will be lost. With software raid, you can read the data on any machine that will boot FreeBSD. That is a great convenience compared to searching eBay for an obsolete controller with the proper rev level. We haven't noticed any speed disadvantage on modern multi-core hardware and RAID 1. The advantages of HW raid escape me - I understand that years ago it provided OS independence and reduced CPU load, but it no longer provides the former, and with 8 cores do you need the latter while waiting for a disk platter to spin? ZFS is worthwhile, too, especially since you have a good amount of memory. That would give you snapshots and some other desirable features, such as background scanning for defects that UFS doesn't have. about what the purpose of the server is? Mission-critical or low cost? Those two tends to be mutually exclusive... Surely the presence of SATA drives shows that low cost is essential. Mirroring and ZFS provide very important advantages. HW raid seems to fill a much needed gap (apologies to Brian Kernigan). daniel feenberg We are HP-only but have good experience from LSI as well. Just my $0.02. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Software raid VS hardware raid
On Jan 28, 2013, at 3:43 PM, Artem Kuchin wrote: I have to made a decision on choosing a dedicated server. The problem i see is that while i can find very affordable and good options they do not provide hardware raid or even if they do it is not the best hardware for freebsd. I prefer SW RAID, specifically ZFS, for two very large reasons: 1) Visibility: From the OS layer you have very good visibility into the health of the RAID set and the underlying drives. All of the lower end HW RAID solutions I have seen require proprietary software to manage the RAID configuration, usually from the physical system's BIOS layer. Finding good OS layer software to monitor the RAID and the drives has been very painful. If you don't know you have a failure, then you can't do anything about it and when you have a second failure you lose data. Running a HW RAID system and not being able to issue a simple command from the OS and see the status of the RAID scares me. 2) Error Detection and Correction: HW RAID relies on the drives to report read and write errors. With UNCORRECTABLE error rates of 10^-14 and 10^-15 and LARGE (1 TB plus) drives you are almost guaranteed to statistically run into UNCORRECTABLE errors over the life of a typical drive. ZFS has end to end checksums and can detect a single bad bit from a drive, if the set is redundant it can recreate the correct data and re-write it, effectively correcting the bad data on disk. NOTE: Larger, more expensive HW RAID systems address both of the above issues, but at a much higher cost in terms of money and management overhead. DISCLAIMER: I have been managing mission critical, cannot afford to lose it data under ZFS for over 5 years, with no loss of data (even with some horribly unreliable low cost HW RAID systems under the ZFS layer... if we had not used ZFS we would have lost data multiple times). -- Paul Kraus Deputy Technical Director, LoneStarCon 3 Sound Coordinator, Schenectady Light Opera Company ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Software raid VS hardware raid
Artem Kuchin wrote: Hello! I have to made a decision on choosing a dedicated server. The problem i see is that while i can find very affordable and good options they do not provide hardware raid or even if they do it is not the best hardware for freebsd. The server base conf is 8core 32gb ram 2.8+ ghz. So, maybe someone has personal experience with both worlds and can tell if it really matters in such configuration if i go for software raid. What are the benefits and what are the negatives of software raid? How much is the performance penalty? I am planning to use mirror configuration of two SATA 7200rpm 2TB disks. Nothing fancy. File system planned is UFS with journaling. I can't say for sure exactly what's best for your needs, however, please allow me to toss out some very generic tidbits which may aid you in some way. Historically back when RAID was new, hardware controllers were the only way to go. Back then I would never look at software RAID for a server machine. Best to offload as much work away from the CPU as possible to free it up for running the OS. What has changed is the amount of raw horsepower available from modern-day processors as compared to when RAID first came out. On the multi-core monster CPUs of today software RAID is a perfectly viable consideration because there are CPU cycles to spare, so the performance penalty is less now than it once was. Having said that, there are several other considerations to keep in mind as well. The type of RAID required matters. If you want/need RAID 5/6 it is definitely better to go with hardware RAID because of the horsepower required to do the XOR parity generation. You would want RAID 5/6 running on a hardware controller and not on the CPU. On the other hand, RAID 0, 1, and 10 are fine candidates for software RAID. One thing I've noticed that seems to somewhat get lost in this discussion is equating software-based RAID with not needing to spend money on the expensive RAID controller. At first glance it does seem like quite a waste to spend hundreds of dollars on a really fast RAID controller and then turn all its functionality off and just use it JBOD style. If you truly want performance you still need the processing power of the hardware chip on the (expensive) controller. Most central to this is I/Os per second. This matters more to some workloads than others, with being a database server probably at the top of the list where I/Os per second is king. The better the chip on the controller card the more I/Os per second. Another thing that matters less wrt to server hardware is the third kind of RAID known as fake or pseudo RAID. This is mostly found on desktop PC motherboards and some low-end (cheap) hardware cards. There is a config in the BIOS to set up so-called RAID, but it is only half of the matter - the other half is in the driver. FreeBSD does indeed have support for some of these fake RAID things but I stay far far away from them. Either go hardware or pure software only - the fakeraid is crap. Another thing I'd warn you about is the drives themselves. Take a look: http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1397 Many people get very lucky much of the time and don't experience problems with this. Using drives designed for desktop PCs with RAID can be prone to problem. Drives designed for servers are more expensive, but I've always felt it is better to put server drives in servers. :-) In terms of a 'performance penalty' what you will find is it gets shifted away from just losing a few CPU cycles into other areas. If the drives are Advanced Format 4k sector critters and they aren't properly aligned in the partitioning phase of set up performance will take a hit. If the controller chip they are hooked up to is slow, then the entire drive subsystem will suffer. Another thing you will find that will surface as a problem area is the shift away from the old style DOS MBR scheme and towards GPT. Software RAID (and indeed hardware controllers too) store their metadata at the end of the drive and needs to be outside the file system. The problem arises when both the software raid and the GPT partitioning try to store metadata to the same location and collide. Just knowing about this in advance and spending some quality reading time about it prior to trying to set up the box will help greatly. Plenty has been written (even in this list) about this subject by people smarter than me so the info you need is out there, albeit it can be confusing at first. I guess what I'm trying to point out is that low performance wrt software RAID will stem from other things besides just simply consuming a few CPU cycles. Today's CPUs have the cycles to spare. I've been using gmirror for RAID 1 mirrors for a few years now and am happy with this. I have had a few old drives die and the servers stayed up and online. This allowed me to defer the actual drive replacement and not have
Re: Hardware RAID controller questions - 3Ware vs RocketRaid
On Thu, 18-Mar-2010 at 09:37:32 +0100, Andy Wodfer wrote: Hi, We're setting up two backup servers where each server will have about 4TB of harddrives (for now) connected (4x1TB and 8x500GB drives). Last night we ran into trouble with the 3ware controllers we have (9650SE-8LPML) because we couldn't create a larger RAID5 than 1.99TB. I can only speak for a 9690SA-8I, but this thing is amazing. It handles FSs over 2TB pretty well: twa0: 3ware 9000 series Storage Controller port 0xc800-0xc8ff mem 0xfa00-0xfbff,0xfeaff000-0xfeaf irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci4 twa0: [ITHREAD] twa0: INFO: (0x15: 0x1300): Controller details:: Model 9690SA-8I, 128 ports, Firmware FH9X 4.10.00.007, BIOS BE9X 4.08.00.002 And with 8 1TB in a RAID5 drives it gives me: da0 at twa0 bus 0 target 0 lun 0 box:~diskinfo /dev/da0 /dev/da0512 624277248 13671727104 851025 255 63 -Andre We are going to use FreeBSD 8.0 and Bacula, but first we obviously need to create a working RAID. My questions are: - Are HighPoint RocketRaid controllers a good alternative to 3ware controllers? Are RocketRaid controllers true hardware RAID? - What should we look for in a RAID controller spec to see that it has support for larger than 2TB RAIDs? I've been looking at these: http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/series_rr2300.htm http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/series_rr3500.htm Any FreeBSD recommendations? Or perhaps for another 3ware controller? We're using SATAII drives. Thanks for your help! Best regards, Andreas ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org -- I am forced by company policy to use Micro$oft products. I am not responsible for this choice and decline any responsibility for any harm which may be caused by it. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Hardware RAID controller questions - 3Ware vs RocketRaid
Thanks for all your feedback. The problem occurs in the RAID controller BIOS (before we even boot or get to the OS install). Thanks to John for confirming these cards do work above 2TB. I will look into upgrading the firmware (on these brand new cards). Perhaps it's just the current firmware that can't handle 2TB harddrives x 3 in RAID. Cheers, Andreas ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Hardware RAID controller questions - 3Ware vs RocketRaid
Hi, We're setting up two backup servers where each server will have about 4TB of harddrives (for now) connected (4x1TB and 8x500GB drives). Last night we ran into trouble with the 3ware controllers we have (9650SE-8LPML) because we couldn't create a larger RAID5 than 1.99TB. We are going to use FreeBSD 8.0 and Bacula, but first we obviously need to create a working RAID. My questions are: - Are HighPoint RocketRaid controllers a good alternative to 3ware controllers? Are RocketRaid controllers true hardware RAID? - What should we look for in a RAID controller spec to see that it has support for larger than 2TB RAIDs? I've been looking at these: http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/series_rr2300.htm http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/series_rr3500.htm Any FreeBSD recommendations? Or perhaps for another 3ware controller? We're using SATAII drives. Thanks for your help! Best regards, Andreas ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Hardware RAID controller questions - 3Ware vs RocketRaid
On Thu, March 18, 2010 8:37 am, Andy Wodfer wrote: Hi, We're setting up two backup servers where each server will have about 4TB of harddrives (for now) connected (4x1TB and 8x500GB drives). Last night we ran into trouble with the 3ware controllers we have (9650SE-8LPML) because we couldn't create a larger RAID5 than 1.99TB. We are going to use FreeBSD 8.0 and Bacula, but first we obviously need to create a working RAID. My questions are: - Are HighPoint RocketRaid controllers a good alternative to 3ware controllers? Are RocketRaid controllers true hardware RAID? - What should we look for in a RAID controller spec to see that it has support for larger than 2TB RAIDs? I've been looking at these: http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/series_rr2300.htm http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/series_rr3500.htm Any FreeBSD recommendations? Or perhaps for another 3ware controller? We're using SATAII drives. Thanks for your help! Is ZFS not an option? - you could save yourself a lot of money and hassle with hardware RAID by moving to ZFS. Either using onboard SATA ports on the motherboard (and accept that you might have to shutdown the box to swap failed disks out) or get a simple 8-port HBA in JBOD mode, e.g: http://www.lsi.com/channel/products/hba/sas_sata_hbas/internal/lsisas3081er/index.html You'll need plenty of RAM too, but IMHO it is worth the trade. HTH, Matt. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Hardware RAID controller questions - 3Ware vs RocketRaid
On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 10:30 AM, Matthew Law m...@webcontracts.co.ukwrote: Is ZFS not an option? I'm afraid ZFS is not an option for this customer. I use ZFS on other system and it works great, but here the requirement is RAID5, hotswap, hotspare and so on. Cheers, Andreas ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Hardware RAID controller questions - 3Ware vs RocketRaid
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 18.03.2010 10:35, Andy Wodfer wrote: On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 10:30 AM, Matthew Law m...@webcontracts.co.ukwrote: Is ZFS not an option? I'm afraid ZFS is not an option for this customer. I use ZFS on other system and it works great, but here the requirement is RAID5, hotswap, hotspare and so on. You should consider the LSI Megaraid SAS as well. The aging 8308elp, performs quite nicely with decent disks. Got one here (at home) handling 8 1T5 Barracudas in RAID50 (with coldspares), that routinely handles 400+mbytes/sec io, even in windows. It's been running in FreeBSD as well, but until I can figure out how to get reliable backups (the MPT issue shared with OpenSolaris) I'm stuck with windows on the box. FreeBSD's mfiutil works works splendidly with the controller allowing you to handle things like patrol-reads from an SSH session without much trouble. As a SAS-controller, it eats both SAS and SATA disks, and plain and simple just works. //Svein - -- - +---+--- /\ |Svein Skogen | sv...@d80.iso100.no \ / |Solberg Østli 9| PGP Key: 0xE5E76831 X|2020 Skedsmokorset | sv...@jernhuset.no / \ |Norway | PGP Key: 0xCE96CE13 | | sv...@stillbilde.net ascii | | PGP Key: 0x58CD33B6 ribbon |System Admin | svein-listm...@stillbilde.net Campaign|stillbilde.net | PGP Key: 0x22D494A4 +---+--- |msn messenger: | Mobile Phone: +47 907 03 575 |sv...@jernhuset.no | RIPE handle:SS16503-RIPE - +---+--- If you really are in a hurry, mail me at svein-mob...@stillbilde.net This mailbox goes directly to my cellphone and is checked even when I'm not in front of my computer. - Picture Gallery: https://gallery.stillbilde.net/v/svein/ - -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2.0.12 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAkuh9YAACgkQODUnwSLUlKTZiwCeODrGVYneWFn9nKZDUJ5jhOdt 3boAoIM/HrcfpzKXNOsPic+QQ4ooaL5d =Yya0 -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Hardware RAID controller questions - 3Ware vs RocketRaid
On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 09:37:32AM +0100, Andy Wodfer wrote: Hi, We're setting up two backup servers where each server will have about 4TB of harddrives (for now) connected (4x1TB and 8x500GB drives). Last night we ran into trouble with the 3ware controllers we have (9650SE-8LPML) because we couldn't create a larger RAID5 than 1.99TB. That is strange, since all the 3ware 9000-series controllers (including the 9650) are supposed to be able to handle arrays larger than 2TB. -- Insert your favourite quote here. Erik Trulsson ertr1...@student.uu.se ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Hardware RAID controller questions - 3Ware vs RocketRaid
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 18/03/2010 10:09:55, Erik Trulsson wrote: On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 09:37:32AM +0100, Andy Wodfer wrote: Hi, We're setting up two backup servers where each server will have about 4TB of harddrives (for now) connected (4x1TB and 8x500GB drives). Last night we ran into trouble with the 3ware controllers we have (9650SE-8LPML) because we couldn't create a larger RAID5 than 1.99TB. That is strange, since all the 3ware 9000-series controllers (including the 9650) are supposed to be able to handle arrays larger than 2TB. Is it perhaps not a limitation in the 3ware controller, but rather the 2TB limit for a single slice imposed by the traditional DOS mbr? In which case, simply switching to using gpart(8) should solve the problem and let you have much larger filesystems. Cheers, Matthew - -- Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 7 Priory Courtyard Flat 3 PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Ramsgate Kent, CT11 9PW -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.14 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAkuh/1EACgkQ8Mjk52CukIxwFQCfUsDOes4mAPBFLQUX6QvB/F97 4swAnRnKagfg86IG5gxBlMIBJOmmD7y+ =BGlc -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Hardware RAID controller questions - 3Ware vs RocketRaid
Hi and what about Areca? Natively supported via arcmsr driver. For SATA II http://www.areca.com.tw/products/pcie.htm (ARC-1230, ARC-1260) or http://www.areca.com.tw/products/pcie341.htm On one installation I have successfully set up RAID5 with 8x 1TB SATA II drives on ARC-1220, approx 6.5TB filesystem regards Jiri - What should we look for in a RAID controller spec to see that it has support for larger than 2TB RAIDs? I've been looking at these: http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/series_rr2300.htm http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/series_rr3500.htm Any FreeBSD recommendations? Or perhaps for another 3ware controller? We're using SATAII drives. Thanks for your help! Best regards, Andreas ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Hardware RAID controller questions - 3Ware vs RocketRaid
At 04:37 AM 3/18/2010, Andy Wodfer wrote: Hi, We're setting up two backup servers where each server will have about 4TB of harddrives (for now) connected (4x1TB and 8x500GB drives). Last night we ran into trouble with the 3ware controllers we have (9650SE-8LPML) because we couldn't create a larger RAID5 than 1.99TB. Are you sure its the controller that was giving that error ? I ran into something similar with my Areca controller on a backup server. I ended up creating 2 raid sets, one for the boot OS and the other for the backup spool and used gpart for the larger than 2TB RS. Perhaps the same needs to be done on the 3ware eg # df -h Filesystem SizeUsed Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/da0s1a1.9G496M1.3G28%/ devfs 1.0K1.0K 0B 100%/dev /dev/da1s1d 29G 10G 16G39%/usr /dev/da1s1e 33G5.0G 26G16%/var /dev/da0s1d 61G 50G6.4G89%/var/db /dev/da2p1 2.6T797G1.6T33%/backup zbackup1 2.7T1.2T1.4T46%/zbackup1 I would go for the 3ware over the RocketRaid. We have used the 3ware cards for some time and they have been very reliable for us. The disk replacement process is well designed and has been reliable for us over the years. We also use some of the Areca cards and they have been good too. Not much experience with the RocketRaid. ---Mike Mike Tancsa, tel +1 519 651 3400 Sentex Communications,m...@sentex.net Providing Internet since 1994www.sentex.net Cambridge, Ontario Canada www.sentex.net/mike ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Hardware RAID controller questions - 3Ware vs RocketRaid
On Thursday 18 March 2010 03:37:32 Andy Wodfer wrote: Hi, We're setting up two backup servers where each server will have about 4TB of harddrives (for now) connected (4x1TB and 8x500GB drives). Last night we ran into trouble with the 3ware controllers we have (9650SE-8LPML) because we couldn't create a larger RAID5 than 1.99TB. We are going to use FreeBSD 8.0 and Bacula, but first we obviously need to create a working RAID. My questions are: - Are HighPoint RocketRaid controllers a good alternative to 3ware controllers? Are RocketRaid controllers true hardware RAID? - What should we look for in a RAID controller spec to see that it has support for larger than 2TB RAIDs? I've been looking at these: http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/series_rr2300.htm http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/series_rr3500.htm Any FreeBSD recommendations? Or perhaps for another 3ware controller? We're using SATAII drives. Thanks for your help! Best regards, Andreas You are hitting an issue with DOS MBR limitations, not the RAID controller itself. Either use GPT or put a filesystem on the raw device with no fdisk at all. The latter strategy is the better one if you intend to ever grow the filesystem. 3ware controllers are the best game in town for FreeBSD. We use them extensively both internally and for our customers at iXsystems. You can flash the controller firmware from in the OS on FreeBSD using tw_cli. You might also consider running ZFS on the hardware RAID instead of UFS. You get the advantages of running a hardware RAID controller, plus the advantages of ZFS (namely no fsck) r...@servant /usr/src -tw_cli /c0 show Unit UnitType Status %RCmpl %V/I/M Stripe Size(GB) Cache AVrfy -- u0RAID-6OK - - 256K5587.88 RiWON r...@servant /usr/src -grep 'da0' /var/run/dmesg.boot da0 at twa0 bus 0 target 0 lun 0 da0: AMCC 9690SA-4I4 DISK 4.08 Fixed Direct Access SCSI-5 device da0: 100.000MB/s transfers da0: 122879MB (251658239 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 15665C) ** small boot LUN r...@servant /usr/src -grep 'da1' /var/run/dmesg.boot da1 at twa0 bus 0 target 0 lun 1 da1: AMCC 9690SA-4I4 DISK 4.08 Fixed Direct Access SCSI-5 device da1: 100.000MB/s transfers da1: 5599104MB (11466964993 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 713785C) ** The rest of it r...@servant /usr/src -zpool status -v pool: a state: ONLINE scrub: none requested config: NAMESTATE READ WRITE CKSUM a ONLINE 0 0 0 da1 ONLINE 0 0 0 errors: No known data errors r...@servant /usr/src -df -h a FilesystemSizeUsed Avail Capacity Mounted on a 5.2T2.2T3.0T42%/a -- Thanks, Josh Paetzel FreeBSD -- The power to serve signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: ZFS Snaphost Hardware RAID
2009/11/16 Johan Hendriks jo...@double-l.nl Hello all. I plan to set up backup server with 24x1Tb HDD and use ZFS with FreeBSD-8.0 on it. I prefare to have ZFS only system but as I see there is no any easy way to do so. I would like to use ZFS snapshots - is I undestand right what snaphots work OVER ZFS raidz\storage? So I can`t use hardware RAID and must make a raidz? I would love to head any other suggestion about using FreeBSD with ZFS as backup server. -- Best regards, Proskurin Kirill An option is reading this thread on the FreeBSD forums. http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=3689 regards, Johan Hendriks ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org zfs works fine with hardware raid controllers, it just means the disk setup can be a little more complicated, and needs to be thought about a bit more. Personally I would JBOD all the drives apart from the system drives which I would create a mirror for. With this setup you utilize all the best features of the hardware and software. System zpool with hardware mirror means you are less likely to get issues booting as bios will see the virtal device exported by the raid card and wont have to alter the boot drive if one of your system drives dies. Just give the system zpool on dev backup zpool: raidz2 ( group into vdevs of 8 drives ). If you export the drives from the hardware raid as a jbod and get zfs to do all the raid stuff, you will enjoy more funky raid configs, and if you have to rebuild a drive it will odds on be much quicker as you only have to do allocated blocks as opposed to full block rebuild of the entire drive as the raid controller would do. Also using the raid card rather than straight scsi you might get benefits from the raid cache, if its cpu is quick enough. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
ZFS Snaphost Hardware RAID
Hello all. I plan to set up backup server with 24x1Tb HDD and use ZFS with FreeBSD-8.0 on it. I prefare to have ZFS only system but as I see there is no any easy way to do so. I would like to use ZFS snapshots - is I undestand right what snaphots work OVER ZFS raidz\storage? So I can`t use hardware RAID and must make a raidz? I would love to head any other suggestion about using FreeBSD with ZFS as backup server. -- Best regards, Proskurin Kirill ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
RE: ZFS Snaphost Hardware RAID
Hello all. I plan to set up backup server with 24x1Tb HDD and use ZFS with FreeBSD-8.0 on it. I prefare to have ZFS only system but as I see there is no any easy way to do so. I would like to use ZFS snapshots - is I undestand right what snaphots work OVER ZFS raidz\storage? So I can`t use hardware RAID and must make a raidz? I would love to head any other suggestion about using FreeBSD with ZFS as backup server. -- Best regards, Proskurin Kirill An option is reading this thread on the FreeBSD forums. http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=3689 regards, Johan Hendriks ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
zfs raid and/or hardware raid..
I have a dimension 9150 that I am going to put amd64 freebsd on to play with. It has Intel ICH7 SATA300 on it, in the bios it says it can do raid. I'm assuming that would be a hardware raid.. Would I be better off just using two disks and mirror them in software raid (zpool) or using the Intel hardware-ish raid and then zfs the raid? box has 2G of ram, and a pair of 250G sata 300 drives. clues appreciated. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: zfs raid and/or hardware raid..
If your are just going to play with it, the play as much as you want with ZFS. But, if you are going to setup something that will have to go on production some day, at least at this moment i wouldn't recommend you ZFS. I've used it for a backup server, and due to power failures in the building, all the times the energy went out the pool got corrupted, the las one was completely unrecoverable.I ended up using gconcat/gstripe and so on, and despite a couple more power failures, just once I've had to run fsck.Everything works (and feels) much more solid now. Just my opinion. B. Cook wrote: I have a dimension 9150 that I am going to put amd64 freebsd on to play with. It has Intel ICH7 SATA300 on it, in the bios it says it can do raid. I'm assuming that would be a hardware raid.. Would I be better off just using two disks and mirror them in software raid (zpool) or using the Intel hardware-ish raid and then zfs the raid? box has 2G of ram, and a pair of 250G sata 300 drives. clues appreciated. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: zfs raid and/or hardware raid..
On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 12:58:04PM -0500, B. Cook wrote: I have a dimension 9150 that I am going to put amd64 freebsd on to play with. It has Intel ICH7 SATA300 on it, in the bios it says it can do raid. I'm assuming that would be a hardware raid.. You are assuming wrong. It is software RAID, just like almost all on-board RAID implementations (and most of the cheaper add-on RAID cards.) RAID that is supported in the BIOS have one advantage over other software implementations, and that is that you can boot from all supported RAID configurations, which is not always the case otherwise. Would I be better off just using two disks and mirror them in software raid (zpool) or using the Intel hardware-ish raid and then zfs the raid? box has 2G of ram, and a pair of 250G sata 300 drives. clues appreciated. ZFS still feels a little bit too experimental for my own tastes (although opinions differ on that matter), but apart from that ZFS is probably the best solution. -- Insert your favourite quote here. Erik Trulsson ertr1...@student.uu.se ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: zfs raid and/or hardware raid..
RAID implementations (and most of the cheaper add-on RAID cards.) RAID that is supported in the BIOS have one advantage over other software implementations, and that is that you can boot from all supported RAID configurations, which is not always the case otherwise. always - if you use software RAID (gmirror) properly. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: zfs raid and/or hardware raid..
On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 10:18:42PM +0100, Wojciech Puchar wrote: RAID implementations (and most of the cheaper add-on RAID cards.) RAID that is supported in the BIOS have one advantage over other software implementations, and that is that you can boot from all supported RAID configurations, which is not always the case otherwise. always - if you use software RAID (gmirror) properly. gmirror handles only RAID-1 if I am not mistaken. That is the exception where you can boot from a RAID array even the BIOS does not know about it. (But I would worry about what would happen if you were trying to boot from a degraded RAID-1 array. What happens if the BIOS tries to boot the wrong disk?) For a RAID-0, RAID-5, or RAID-10 array on the other hand, I think it is not possible to boot from them unless you have a BIOS which understands the array format. -- Insert your favourite quote here. Erik Trulsson ertr1...@student.uu.se ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
atacontrol software or hardware raid
How can I detect if system has Software or hardware raid? Since in manual page: The atacontrol command can also be used to create purely software RAID arrays in systems that do NOT have a real hardware RAID card such as a Highpoint or Promise card. A common scenario is a 1U server such as the HP DL320 G4 or G5. These servers contain a SATA controller that has 2 channels that can contain 2 disks per channel, but the servers are wired to only place a single SATA drive on each channel. Or how can I find out if the hardware is real hardware RAID card? For example my system has following dmesg output: ad4: 152627MB Seagate ST3160815AS 4.AAB at ata2-master SATA300 ad6: 152627MB Seagate ST3160815AS 4.AAB at ata3-master SATA300 ar0: 152625MB Intel MatrixRAID RAID1 status: READY ar0: disk0 READY (master) using ad6 at ata3-master ar0: disk1 READY (mirror) using ad4 at ata2-master This system is an intel server with S3210SH server board in it. While installing system I see ad4,ad6 and ar0 as harddrives in sysinstall. I choose to install ar0. Additionally as far as I see ar0 is very susceptible to errors since a single CRC error can break the RAID consistency is that normal? I really appreciate those who uses such a kind of RAID1 Regards. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: atacontrol software or hardware raid
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Omer Faruk Sen wrote: How can I detect if system has Software or hardware raid? Since in manual page: The atacontrol command can also be used to create purely software RAID arrays in systems that do NOT have a real hardware RAID card such as a Highpoint or Promise card. A common scenario is a 1U server such as the HP DL320 G4 or G5. These servers contain a SATA controller that has 2 channels that can contain 2 disks per channel, but the servers are wired to only place a single SATA drive on each channel. Or how can I find out if the hardware is real hardware RAID card? For example my system has following dmesg output: ad4: 152627MB Seagate ST3160815AS 4.AAB at ata2-master SATA300 ad6: 152627MB Seagate ST3160815AS 4.AAB at ata3-master SATA300 ar0: 152625MB Intel MatrixRAID RAID1 status: READY ar0: disk0 READY (master) using ad6 at ata3-master ar0: disk1 READY (mirror) using ad4 at ata2-master This system is an intel server with S3210SH server board in it. While installing system I see ad4,ad6 and ar0 as harddrives in sysinstall. I choose to install ar0. Additionally as far as I see ar0 is very susceptible to errors since a single CRC error can break the RAID consistency is that normal? I really appreciate those who uses such a kind of RAID1 Regards. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org ar RAID devices are almost always software/BIOS RAID. In this case intel matrix raid is software RAID provided by the system BIOS. The disadvantages of using it is your RAID array isn't portable to machines that don't have the same BIOS raid implimentation. One of the advantages of BIOS RAID is that you can boot from stripes, which you aren't doing anyways. You'll probably find that disabling the motherboard RAID and creating a gmirror device is a better option for software RAID 1. - -- Thanks, Josh Paetzel PGP: 8A48 EF36 5E9F 4EDA 5ABC 11B4 26F9 01F1 27AF AECB -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.8 (Darwin) iEYEARECAAYFAkl81jYACgkQJvkB8Sevrsu1swCcCCq6/cG0WYajBvutibgvhIaA kn8An27y/SPbEKzRyaWntfZV95z/UJia =k2Gx -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: atacontrol software or hardware raid
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Omer Faruk Sen wrote: How can I detect if system has Software or hardware raid? Since in manual page: The atacontrol command can also be used to create purely software RAID arrays in systems that do NOT have a real hardware RAID card such as a Highpoint or Promise card. A common scenario is a 1U server such as the HP DL320 G4 or G5. These servers contain a SATA controller that has 2 channels that can contain 2 disks per channel, but the servers are wired to only place a single SATA drive on each channel. Or how can I find out if the hardware is real hardware RAID card? For example my system has following dmesg output: ad4: 152627MB Seagate ST3160815AS 4.AAB at ata2-master SATA300 ad6: 152627MB Seagate ST3160815AS 4.AAB at ata3-master SATA300 ar0: 152625MB Intel MatrixRAID RAID1 status: READY ar0: disk0 READY (master) using ad6 at ata3-master ar0: disk1 READY (mirror) using ad4 at ata2-master This system is an intel server with S3210SH server board in it. While installing system I see ad4,ad6 and ar0 as harddrives in sysinstall. I choose to install ar0. Additionally as far as I see ar0 is very susceptible to errors since a single CRC error can break the RAID consistency is that normal? I really appreciate those who uses such a kind of RAID1 Regards. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org ar RAID devices are almost always software/BIOS RAID. In this case intel matrix raid is software RAID provided by the system BIOS. The disadvantages of using it is your RAID array isn't portable to machines that don't have the same BIOS raid implimentation. One of the advantages of BIOS RAID is that you can boot from stripes, which you aren't doing anyways. You'll probably find that disabling the motherboard RAID and creating a gmirror device is a better option for software RAID 1. - -- Thanks, Josh Paetzel PGP: 8A48 EF36 5E9F 4EDA 5ABC 11B4 26F9 01F1 27AF AECB -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.8 (Darwin) iEYEARECAAYFAkl81jYACgkQJvkB8Sevrsu1swCcCCq6/cG0WYajBvutibgvhIaA kn8An27y/SPbEKzRyaWntfZV95z/UJia =k2Gx -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: atacontrol software or hardware raid
ar RAID devices are almost always software/BIOS RAID. In this case intel matrix raid is software RAID provided by the system BIOS. The it's always better to use gmirror. not mentioning more flexibility (you do not have to mirror whole drives) ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Hardware Raid + hot-replace failed disk
Pieter Donche wrote: Suppose you have a system with multiple disks managed by a hardware RAID controller in a RAID5 of RAID6 configuration, To FreeBSD it will look like e.g. a single large drive. If you want to extend your disk space by plugging in an extra disk, the hardware RAID controller will probably detect it and add it in his management, but will it be seen by FreeBSD? How can you make the added disk-space available for FreeBSD. Can this be done without shutting down the system? How?? I think this would be possible using vinum, but I've never tested it. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Hardware Raid + hot-replace failed disk
On Thu, 6 Nov 2008, Wojciech Puchar wrote: Suppose you have a system with multiple disks managed by a hardware RAID controller in a RAID5 of RAID6 configuration, To FreeBSD it will look like e.g. a single large drive. what is RAID5 of RAID6??? RAID5 or RAID6 (sorry, typing error) If you want to extend your disk space by plugging in an extra disk, the hardware RAID controller will probably detect it and add it in his management, but will it be seen by FreeBSD? FreeBSD will see larger drive. With what command can you see that FreeBSD had 'seen' it ? Or is the the bsdlabel command? Is bsdlabel a partition management program (such as GParted, Partition Magic)? you then have to fix partition table (use bsdlabel -e) fix c partition to be actually sized of whole drive, and then a) add new partition(s) for new space b) extend the size of last partition and use growfs I guess here you mean 2 alternatives: a) using the new space for new partition(s) leaving the existing as they are or b) create no new partitions but extend the last partition to include the new space, by using the growfs command ? How can you make the added disk-space available for FreeBSD. Can this be done without shutting down the system? How?? i don't think FreeBSD can be told to reget device info from controller when partitions of that device are mounted. but i may be wrong Hmm, man growfs says: Currently growfs CAN ONLY ENLARGE UNMOUNTED FILE SYSTEMS. DO NOT TRY ENLARGING A MOUNTED FILE SYSTEM, YOUR SYSTEM WILL PANIC AND YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO USE THE FILE SYSTEM ANY LONGER. If your FreeDSB only has swap and a / file system (with all users inside /usr/home) or you set up FreeBSD with a swap, /, /var and /usr filesystems (with users in /usr/home) and you want to grow a file system (e.g. /usr to give the extra space to users) (scenario b)) then, I guess, you will need to go into single-user mode and boot from CD with a FreeBSD in RAM to be able extend the (unmounted) file system /usr Can scenario a) (making new file system for new space) be done in multi-user mode, or only in single-user mode, will it need a reboot ?? Is there any document (besides the manual pages bsdlabel, growfs, ..) that describes step-by-step what to do to grow an existing file system of to add a new file system on newly added disk space ? Pieter ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Hardware Raid + hot-replace failed disk
On Fri, Nov 07, 2008 at 10:35:39AM +0100, Pieter Donche wrote: On Thu, 6 Nov 2008, Wojciech Puchar wrote: Suppose you have a system with multiple disks managed by a hardware RAID controller in a RAID5 of RAID6 configuration, To FreeBSD it will look like e.g. a single large drive. what is RAID5 of RAID6??? RAID5 or RAID6 (sorry, typing error) If you want to extend your disk space by plugging in an extra disk, the hardware RAID controller will probably detect it and add it in his management, but will it be seen by FreeBSD? FreeBSD will see larger drive. With what command can you see that FreeBSD had 'seen' it ? The answer is: it depends. The below applies to SATA, SAS, and SCSI only; you cannot hot-swap PATA disks. If you have a hot-swap enclosure or a hot-swap backplane, and are using a hardware RAID controller (and I do mean *real* hardware RAID, not BIOS-level RAID like Intel MatrixRAID or Adaptec HostRAID), then the FreeBSD controller driver should report the disk falling off the bus (if a disk is removed), or a disk appearing on the bus (if a disk is added). If the driver does not handle this natively, you will have to rely on command-line utilities from the RAID card vendor to manage this. If you have a hot-swap enclosure or a hot-swap backplane, and are using software/OS-based RAID (such as gvinum, ccd, or ZFS), then it depends on the underlying type of disk you're using. With SATA disks, you rely on the FreeBSD ata(4) layer. You are at the whim of the ata(4) layer and its support for your motherboard chipset, assuming that's what you're using (there are exceptions; see below). Removal of a SATA disk should show the disk falling off the bus, and you will need to perform atacontrol detach channel to ensure the kernel knows the disk has been removed (this is not done automatically, despite what you see on the console; I recommend you do the detach prior to disk removal). Addition of a SATA disk will require you to perform atacontrol attach channel, and hopefully you will see the disk make and model show up moments later. With SCSI or SAS disks, you rely on the FreeBSD da(4) layer, backed by the FreeBSD CAM(4) layer. This layer is proven reliable, and even some SATA RAID controllers use it (such as Areca controllers; yes, they're SATA disks on a hardware RAID controller, but the FreeBSD driver for the Areca card uses da(4) and CAM(4)). Removal of a SCSI disk should show the disk falling off the bus. You can use camcontrol to examine the state of things; you may need to use start/stop (it's been a while since I've used camcontrol). Addition of a SCSI disk might require camcontrol rescan; again, it's been a while since I've used camcontrol. In general, there is no easy way to describe every single scenario under the sun. It greatly depends upon what hardware you're using, and what kind of disk you're using. If you choose to use a hardware RAID card, the card user manual should describe *exactly* how to accomplish additions and removals. Chances are you're talking about generic SATA disks hooked up to your generic motherboard. You should be aware that FreeBSD is somewhat flaky in this regard. I've recently written about a disk swap gone bad (while using a Promise TX4310 controller), which should give you some idea of the chaos that can happen as a result of shoddy driver support: http://wiki.freebsd.org/JeremyChadwick/ZFS_disk_upgrade_gone_bad This article is followed-up by a fully-working example when using an Intel ICH-based board with Intel AHCI enabled (meaning, everything worked flawlessly and exactly how it should've): http://wiki.freebsd.org/JeremyChadwick/ZFS_disk_upgrade_gone_bad_part_2 I'm still in the process of writing the details that make up Part 2. Or is the the bsdlabel command? bsdlabel(8) is what creates filesystems. To format filesystems, you use newfs(8). Is bsdlabel a partition management program (such as GParted, Partition Magic)? No, that's fdisk(8). FreeBSD calls these slices, not partitions, but they're the same thing. If you want to keep it simple, I recommend you use sade(8), which is the text-based interface for partitioning and filesystem creation that you see when you install FreeBSD. If you don't have the sade command, just run sysinstall and choose post-configuration. Is there any document (besides the manual pages bsdlabel, growfs, ..) that describes step-by-step what to do to grow an existing file system of to add a new file system on newly added disk space ? What everyone else is telling you is sending you on a wild goose chase. I'm sitting here imagining you clicking your mouse at 6000 clicks per second, eyeballs rolling around, sweating profusely. :-) I wish FreeBSD mailing list people wouldn't do this to new folks, because all it's doing is confusing you. The simple answer is this: on FreeBSD, there is not a reliable way to grow an existing filesystem without taking the machine down, bringing it into single-user
Hardware Raid + hot-replace failed disk
Suppose you have a system with multiple disks managed by a hardware RAID controller in a RAID5 of RAID6 configuration, To FreeBSD it will look like e.g. a single large drive. If you want to extend your disk space by plugging in an extra disk, the hardware RAID controller will probably detect it and add it in his management, but will it be seen by FreeBSD? How can you make the added disk-space available for FreeBSD. Can this be done without shutting down the system? How?? ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Hardware Raid + hot-replace failed disk
Suppose you have a system with multiple disks managed by a hardware RAID controller in a RAID5 of RAID6 configuration, what is RAID5 of RAID6??? To FreeBSD it will look like e.g. a single large drive. If you want to extend your disk space by plugging in an extra disk, the hardware RAID controller will probably detect it and add it in his management, but will it be seen by FreeBSD? FreeBSD will see larger drive. you then have to fix partition table (use bsdlabel -e) fix c partition to be actually sized of whole drive, and then a) add new partition(s) for new space b) extend the size of last partition and use growfs How can you make the added disk-space available for FreeBSD. Can this be done without shutting down the system? How?? i don't think FreeBSD can be told to reget device info from controller when partitions of that device are mounted. but i may be wrong ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Hardware Raid + hot-replace failed disk
On Thursday 06 November 2008 22:01:39 Wojciech Puchar wrote: Suppose you have a system with multiple disks managed by a hardware RAID controller in a RAID5 of RAID6 configuration, what is RAID5 of RAID6??? 'of' is 'or' in dutch, common typo for dutch or flemish people. -- Mel Problem with today's modular software: they start with the modules and never get to the software part. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Hardware Raid + hot-replace failed disk
On Thursday 06 November 2008 22:01:39 Wojciech Puchar wrote: Suppose you have a system with multiple disks managed by a hardware RAID controller in a RAID5 of RAID6 configuration, what is RAID5 of RAID6??? 'of' is 'or' in dutch, common typo for dutch or flemish people. For Americans also, due to f and r being adjacent on a US-English keyboard. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Hardware RAID diagnostics (Dell PERC 6/i)
I'm in the process of getting a new server, and have been planning on a Dell PowerEdge 1950. I see from this thread: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/2008-January/039675.html That the PERC 6/i RAID controller seems to work fine with the mfi(4) driver; I was planning on a 4 x 73GB RAID5 setup, so the problems about addressing 1TB don't seem to apply. My straightforward question is just wondering about how you get diagnostics from this device. My server will be in a remote location, so I'm curious how I would even know if a disk has failed. There wasn't anything about this in the mfi(4) manpage, nor in the RAID section of the Handbook. My current server is in a 2 x 18GB RAID1 setup, but I pretty much plugged it in and it Just Worked, and I never thought about it any more; this time I'd like to know more about how to manage it. Thanks. Jesse Sheidlower ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Hardware RAID diagnostics (Dell PERC 6/i)
Jesse Sheidlower wrote: I'm in the process of getting a new server, and have been planning on a Dell PowerEdge 1950. I see from this thread: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/2008-January/039675.html That the PERC 6/i RAID controller seems to work fine with the mfi(4) driver; I was planning on a 4 x 73GB RAID5 setup, so the problems about addressing 1TB don't seem to apply. My straightforward question is just wondering about how you get diagnostics from this device. My server will be in a remote location, so I'm curious how I would even know if a disk has failed. There wasn't anything about this in the mfi(4) manpage, nor in the RAID section of the Handbook. I've no experience of the 6/i but have a look at the results given by cd /usr/ports make search key=megaraid The megarc util certainly worked on older LSI megaraid controllers and I've used the linux megarc util on recent megaraid sas controllers (MegaRAID SAS 8708ELP) under centos linux Vince My current server is in a 2 x 18GB RAID1 setup, but I pretty much plugged it in and it Just Worked, and I never thought about it any more; this time I'd like to know more about how to manage it. Thanks. Jesse Sheidlower ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Hardware Raid on Intel DG965OT Motherboard
On 5/04/2007 1:52 AM, Alexander Anderson wrote: Thu, Apr 05, 2007 at 08:52:44 AM, Antony Mawer wrote: I have Intel D975XBX2 with two on-board SATA RAID controllers: one is Intel Matrix and the other is Marvell storage. I have FreeBSD 6.2 with RAID-5 using Intel Matrix Storage. It seems to work fine. You may want to re-think that option... according to the ataraid(4) man page, RAID5 is not functional (ie. you have about as much data safety as a RAID0 stripe set does): CAVEATS RAID5 is not supported at this time. Code exists, but it neither uses nor maintains parity information. The ataraid driver provides *software* RAID. But doesn't Intel Matrix Storage gives *hardware* RAID support? How could I tell if software is at play? I'm fairly certain that all ar# devices (ar0, etc) are ataraid-powered, and thus are software RAID. If it is a hardware RAID device, typically the RAID controller presents a single drive (or one drive for each RAID volume) to the OS, and the OS can be ignorant of the number of underlying drives. Also, from man ataraid: The ataraid driver can read the following metadata formats: ... o Intel MatrixRAID Which suggests that is is, indeed, just a software RAID setup. That is, the BIOS-based bit just writes configuration metadata to the drives, and its up to drivers at the OS level to perform the actual RAID operations using that data. --Antony ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Hardware Raid on Intel DG965OT Motherboard
Thu, Apr 05, 2007 at 08:52:44 AM, Antony Mawer wrote: I have Intel D975XBX2 with two on-board SATA RAID controllers: one is Intel Matrix and the other is Marvell storage. I have FreeBSD 6.2 with RAID-5 using Intel Matrix Storage. It seems to work fine. You may want to re-think that option... according to the ataraid(4) man page, RAID5 is not functional (ie. you have about as much data safety as a RAID0 stripe set does): CAVEATS RAID5 is not supported at this time. Code exists, but it neither uses nor maintains parity information. The ataraid driver provides *software* RAID. But doesn't Intel Matrix Storage gives *hardware* RAID support? How could I tell if software is at play? One drive failure and you will be in for a whole world of hurt... I was going to do a test and simulate a drive failure (and see how to rebuild the array). I haven't had a chance to try that yet. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Hardware Raid on Intel DG965OT Motherboard
Tue, Apr 03, 2007 at 05:22:22 PM, Ivan Carey wrote: Is there hardware support for this Motherboard Intel DG965OT Motherboard in FreeBSD 6.2 I have read the Hardware notes but am unable to determine if FreeBSD 6.2 is compatible with Intel DG965OT Motherboard and the on board Martix Storage Technology I would like to setup a Raid 1 http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/DG965OT/index.htm http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/DG965OT/index.htm Also are the any concise instruction on how to setup hardware raid 1? I have searched the net I have Intel D975XBX2 with two on-board SATA RAID controllers: one is Intel Matrix and the other is Marvell storage. I have FreeBSD 6.2 with RAID-5 using Intel Matrix Storage. It seems to work fine. When you set it up, you first have to create a RAID array. When your machine boots, right after (or before?) you see the screen that takes you to the BIOS configuration, you'll be prompted to press Ctrl-I (IIRC) and you'll be taken to RAID controller configuration screen. It's really straightforward how to create a new array. Then, when you boot FreeBSD, you should look at dmesg output. Mine looks like this: ad4: 305245MB Seagate ST3320620AS 3.AAJ at ata2-master SATA150 ad6: 305245MB Seagate ST3320620AS 3.AAJ at ata3-master SATA150 ad8: 305245MB Seagate ST3320620AS 3.AAJ at ata4-master SATA150 ad10: 305245MB Seagate ST3320620AS 3.AAJ at ata5-master SATA150 ar0: 915729MB Intel MatrixRAID RAID5 (stripe 64 KB) status: READY ar0: disk0 READY using ad4 at ata2-master ar0: disk1 READY using ad8 at ata4-master ar0: disk2 READY using ad6 at ata3-master ar0: disk3 READY using ad10 at ata5-master FreeBSD installer asked me what drive I wanted to install it to: ad4, ad6, ad8, ad10, or ar0. Of course, I chose ar0. (The second on-board RAID controller, Marvell 88SE6145, seems to be unsupported under FreeBSD 6.2, unfortunately. It gave me quite some trouble. But that's another topic.) ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Hardware Raid on Intel DG965OT Motherboard
On 4/04/2007 9:30 PM, Alexander Anderson wrote: I have Intel D975XBX2 with two on-board SATA RAID controllers: one is Intel Matrix and the other is Marvell storage. I have FreeBSD 6.2 with RAID-5 using Intel Matrix Storage. It seems to work fine. ... ad4: 305245MB Seagate ST3320620AS 3.AAJ at ata2-master SATA150 ad6: 305245MB Seagate ST3320620AS 3.AAJ at ata3-master SATA150 ad8: 305245MB Seagate ST3320620AS 3.AAJ at ata4-master SATA150 ad10: 305245MB Seagate ST3320620AS 3.AAJ at ata5-master SATA150 ar0: 915729MB Intel MatrixRAID RAID5 (stripe 64 KB) status: READY ar0: disk0 READY using ad4 at ata2-master ar0: disk1 READY using ad8 at ata4-master ar0: disk2 READY using ad6 at ata3-master ar0: disk3 READY using ad10 at ata5-master You may want to re-think that option... according to the ataraid(4) man page, RAID5 is not functional (ie. you have about as much data safety as a RAID0 stripe set does): CAVEATS RAID5 is not supported at this time. Code exists, but it neither uses nor maintains parity information. One drive failure and you will be in for a whole world of hurt... --Antony ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Hardware Raid on Intel DG965OT Motherboard
Alexander Anderson wrote: Tue, Apr 03, 2007 at 05:22:22 PM, Ivan Carey wrote: Is there hardware support for this Motherboard Intel DG965OT Motherboard in FreeBSD 6.2 I have read the Hardware notes but am unable to determine if FreeBSD 6.2 is compatible with Intel DG965OT Motherboard and the on board Martix Storage Technology I would like to setup a Raid 1 http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/DG965OT/index.htm http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/DG965OT/index.htm Also are the any concise instruction on how to setup hardware raid 1? I have searched the net I have Intel D975XBX2 with two on-board SATA RAID controllers: one is Intel Matrix and the other is Marvell storage. I have FreeBSD 6.2 with RAID-5 using Intel Matrix Storage. It seems to work fine. When you set it up, you first have to create a RAID array. When your machine boots, right after (or before?) you see the screen that takes you to the BIOS configuration, you'll be prompted to press Ctrl-I (IIRC) and you'll be taken to RAID controller configuration screen. It's really straightforward how to create a new array. Then, when you boot FreeBSD, you should look at dmesg output. Mine looks like this: ad4: 305245MB Seagate ST3320620AS 3.AAJ at ata2-master SATA150 ad6: 305245MB Seagate ST3320620AS 3.AAJ at ata3-master SATA150 ad8: 305245MB Seagate ST3320620AS 3.AAJ at ata4-master SATA150 ad10: 305245MB Seagate ST3320620AS 3.AAJ at ata5-master SATA150 ar0: 915729MB Intel MatrixRAID RAID5 (stripe 64 KB) status: READY ar0: disk0 READY using ad4 at ata2-master ar0: disk1 READY using ad8 at ata4-master ar0: disk2 READY using ad6 at ata3-master ar0: disk3 READY using ad10 at ata5-master FreeBSD installer asked me what drive I wanted to install it to: ad4, ad6, ad8, ad10, or ar0. Of course, I chose ar0. (The second on-board RAID controller, Marvell 88SE6145, seems to be unsupported under FreeBSD 6.2, unfortunately. It gave me quite some trouble. But that's another topic.) ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Alexander thanks for the info, How do you know when a drive has failed and how do you rebuild the array, Is this done in the bios or in FreeBSD? Thnaks, Ivan ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Hardware Raid on Intel DG965OT Motherboard
Is there hardware support for this Motherboard Intel DG965OT Motherboard in FreeBSD 6.2 I have read the Hardware notes but am unable to determine if FreeBSD 6.2 is compatible with Intel DG965OT Motherboard and the on board Martix Storage Technology I would like to setup a Raid 1 http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/DG965OT/index.htm http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/DG965OT/index.htm Also are the any concise instruction on how to setup hardware raid 1? I have searched the net Thanks, Ivan ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: chipest real hardware raid for FreeBSDWindows XP
On 7/29/06, Igor Robul [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, IgorAll. On 7/10/06, Derek Ragona [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Firstly I asked chipest HARDWARE raid MB doesn't has contained hardware Why dont you wish use geom_mirror if 3Ware card is expensive for you? Because I hoped buy (at least not true hardware) raid adapter on which I can create some logical device(fat32 contained more than 100Gb of mp3'sfilms), which will clear visible under windows xp and FreeBSD. My girl prefers windows, I -- FreeBSD:) But each other of us likes music:) My summary: - true hardware raids like 3ware is expensive for me for home. - external software raid or simple sataII/sata300 controllers have same problem: there are no stable drivers for FreeBSD I have played w/ sil3112(wow:)) and Promise...:( At the moment I playing w/ Promise SATAII TX2plus(it's just controller card)... I have setuped gmirror. But driver has stability problem. (I have tried 6.1-stable, today I upgraded my home box to -current). Sometimes I see setfeatures messages warnings and i/o stops on disks, connected to promise controller. I will investigate it then send bugreports to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Thank you. -- Best wishes, Coredumped. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: chipest real hardware raid for FreeBSDWindows XP
On Tue, Jul 11, 2006 at 09:38:11PM +0400, Eugeny Kuzakov wrote: On 7/10/06, Derek Ragona [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Firstly I asked chipest HARDWARE raid MB doesn't has contained hardware Why dont you wish use geom_mirror if 3Ware card is expensive for you? Also, what costs you more: 3Ware card or your data and time? Even on home server. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: chipest real hardware raid for FreeBSDWindows XP
On 7/10/06, Derek Ragona [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Firstly I asked chipest HARDWARE raid MB doesn't has contained hardware raid... Please see http://linux-ata.org/faq-sata-raid.html -- Best wishes, Coredumped. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: chipest real hardware raid for FreeBSDWindows XP
Rudeness gets you nothing! At 12:38 PM 7/11/2006, Eugeny Kuzakov wrote: On 7/10/06, Derek Ragona mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED][EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Firstly I asked chipest HARDWARE raid MB doesn't has contained hardware raid... Please see http://linux-ata.org/faq-sata-raid.htmlhttp://linux-ata.org/faq-sata-raid.html -- Best wishes, Coredumped. -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by http://www.mailscanner.info/MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. MailScanner thanks http://www.transtec.co.uk/transtec Computers for their support. -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
chipest real hardware raid for FreeBSDWindows XP
Hi guys! Can anybody advice me chipest REAL HARDWARE raid for sata? At the moment I found that chipest is 3ware 8006-2LP... It's about ~$150 It's a little bit expensive for home desktop...:( thank you! -- Best wishes, Coredumped. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: chipest real hardware raid for FreeBSDWindows XP
That is about the cheapest true hardware RAID. You can use lower cost adapters or get a motherboard with built-in RAID. -Derek At 04:12 AM 7/10/2006, Eugeny Kuzakov wrote: Hi guys! Can anybody advice me chipest REAL HARDWARE raid for sata? At the moment I found that chipest is 3ware 8006-2LP... It's about ~$150 It's a little bit expensive for home desktop...:( thank you! -- Best wishes, Coredumped. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support. -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
hardware raid suggestions
Hi, I've got a dell power edge 600sc. (I realize thats getting old) I'm running FreeBSD 6.1-release. I'm looking for suggestions for a good raid setup both controls and disks. I'd like to use hardware raid and not software. I'm more interested in the performance from raid then the redundancy. Its mainly if not exclusively going to be used for compilations of software ASF software. Ideally, I'd like to NFS mount its disk on my desktop over a local gigabit lan. Any pointers appreciated. I'm willing spend up to about $1,000. -- Philip M. Gollucci ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) 323.219.4708 Consultant / http://p6m7g8.net/Resume/resume.shtml Senior Software Engineer - TicketMaster - http://ticketmaster.com 1024D/A79997FA F357 0FDD 2301 6296 690F 6A47 D55A 7172 A799 97F It takes a minute to have a crush on someone, an hour to like someone, and a day to love someone, but it takes a lifetime to forget someone... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: hardware raid suggestions
On 6/12/06, Philip M. Gollucci [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, I've got a dell power edge 600sc. (I realize thats getting old) I'm running FreeBSD 6.1-release. I'm looking for suggestions for a good raid setup both controls and disks. I'd like to use hardware raid and not software. I'm more interested in the performance from raid then the redundancy. Its mainly if not exclusively going to be used for compilations of software ASF software. Ideally, I'd like to NFS mount its disk on my desktop over a local gigabit lan. Any pointers appreciated. I'm willing spend up to about $1,000. How much space do you want? -- BSD Podcasts @: http://bsdtalk.blogspot.com/ http://freebsdforall.blogspot.com/ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: hardware raid suggestions
Nikolas Britton wrote: On 6/12/06, Philip M. Gollucci [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, I've got a dell power edge 600sc. (I realize thats getting old) I'm running FreeBSD 6.1-release. I'm looking for suggestions for a good raid setup both controls and disks. I'd like to use hardware raid and not software. I'm more interested in the performance from raid then the redundancy. Its mainly if not exclusively going to be used for compilations of software ASF software. Ideally, I'd like to NFS mount its disk on my desktop over a local gigabit lan. Any pointers appreciated. I'm willing spend up to about $1,000. How much space do you want? 500GB-1TB is probably way more then I need, but I won't complain. I think 250GB should be good. Thanks. -- Philip M. Gollucci ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) 323.219.4708 Consultant / http://p6m7g8.net/Resume/resume.shtml Senior Software Engineer - TicketMaster - http://ticketmaster.com 1024D/A79997FA F357 0FDD 2301 6296 690F 6A47 D55A 7172 A799 97F It takes a minute to have a crush on someone, an hour to like someone, and a day to love someone, but it takes a lifetime to forget someone... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: hardware raid suggestions
On 6/12/06, Philip M. Gollucci [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Nikolas Britton wrote: On 6/12/06, Philip M. Gollucci [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, I've got a dell power edge 600sc. (I realize thats getting old) I'm running FreeBSD 6.1-release. I'm looking for suggestions for a good raid setup both controls and disks. I'd like to use hardware raid and not software. I'm more interested in the performance from raid then the redundancy. Its mainly if not exclusively going to be used for compilations of software ASF software. Ideally, I'd like to NFS mount its disk on my desktop over a local gigabit lan. Any pointers appreciated. I'm willing spend up to about $1,000. How much space do you want? 500GB-1TB is probably way more then I need, but I won't complain. I think 250GB should be good. That server has 64-bit/33MHz PCI-X slots. At most you have about 105MB/s to work with, assuming your gigiabit NIC also sits on this bus. I feel that SCSI / SAS would be overkill for your needs because you can't take advantage of it's speed, this leaves you with SATA. -- BSD Podcasts @: http://bsdtalk.blogspot.com/ http://freebsdforall.blogspot.com/ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: hardware raid suggestions
On 6/12/06, Philip M. Gollucci [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Nikolas Britton wrote: On 6/12/06, Philip M. Gollucci [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, I've got a dell power edge 600sc. (I realize thats getting old) I'm running FreeBSD 6.1-release. I'm looking for suggestions for a good raid setup both controls and disks. I'd like to use hardware raid and not software. I'm more interested in the performance from raid then the redundancy. Its mainly if not exclusively going to be used for compilations of software ASF software. Ideally, I'd like to NFS mount its disk on my desktop over a local gigabit lan. Any pointers appreciated. I'm willing spend up to about $1,000. How much space do you want? 500GB-1TB is probably way more then I need, but I won't complain. I think 250GB should be good. I have had good luck with LSI RAID cards (hardware reliability wise). You may want to check the archives for fully supported, non-GIANT locked cards. From a performance perspective I would invest in a card with ample onboard ram 128megs or greater, and investigate getting a BBU unit for the card as well. -pete -- ~~o0OO0o~~ Pete Wright www.nycbug.org NYC's *BSD User Group ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: hardware raid suggestions
If you go SATA RAID, I've had good luck and good speed with RocketRaid 1820 cards. P. On Monday 12 June 2006 14:29, pete wright wrote: On 6/12/06, Philip M. Gollucci [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Nikolas Britton wrote: On 6/12/06, Philip M. Gollucci [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, I've got a dell power edge 600sc. (I realize thats getting old) I'm running FreeBSD 6.1-release. I'm looking for suggestions for a good raid setup both controls and disks. I'd like to use hardware raid and not software. I'm more interested in the performance from raid then the redundancy. Its mainly if not exclusively going to be used for compilations of software ASF software. Ideally, I'd like to NFS mount its disk on my desktop over a local gigabit lan. Any pointers appreciated. I'm willing spend up to about $1,000. How much space do you want? 500GB-1TB is probably way more then I need, but I won't complain. I think 250GB should be good. I have had good luck with LSI RAID cards (hardware reliability wise). You may want to check the archives for fully supported, non-GIANT locked cards. From a performance perspective I would invest in a card with ample onboard ram 128megs or greater, and investigate getting a BBU unit for the card as well. -pete ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Hardware RAID Cards..
Aaron C. Meadows wrote: I have an IBM Netfinity 5000 server I just picked up, and it has an Adaptec AAA-131U2 (aic7815 chipset) RAID card in it, attached to 5 IBM Branded (Seagate ST39204LC) Hot Swap Ultra160 9.1gig SCSI Harddrives. My question is, since that chipset is unsupported for hardware RAID, would I be better off to software RAID them, or get a different RAID card? Contingent question is, if I should get another RAID card, what would be a good, supported, entry level card? This server will be purposed as a webserver for a small webhosting company, maybe 100 sites on it. Running Postfix,Bind,Apache2,PHP,Postgresql,etc I'm running a Netfinity 5000 with IBM ServeRAID 3L adapter. I won't say it's good (it lacks any kind of online RAID management or monitoring from within FreeBSD AFAICT), but it works and is definitely 'entry level'. This machine works as a webmail/IMAP server for ~150 users, listserver hosting ~50 mailing lists and as incoming mail scanner/gateway (postfix+amavisd+spamassassin+clamav) for another mail server with ca 500 users. Getting it to work with FreeBSD 5.2.1 was a pain, but 5.3 seems to run good. Doesn't boot with ACPI enabled, though. As to other suggestions made in this thread, they don't seem to be relevant for Netfinity 5000 since I can't think of a way to use ATA drives in this machine. --- ... When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Hardware RAID Cards..
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Kirk Strauser wrote: On Tuesday 24 May 2005 14:48, Aaron C. Meadows wrote: I'm planning on using RAID 5, since they are kind of small drives, and I'm more interested in reliability and size, than speed. Hmmm - I'd probably look toward a hardware system, then. I've had great luck with software mirroring and striping, but those really don't put a lot of demand on the CPU. If you're also doing database, mail, and PHP on the same system then you'd probably want a bit of external acceleration. Don't everyone jump on this thread all at once.. I won't be able to read it fast enough... =) - --aaron -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFClWfX/mrzqN8FLFURAtZpAJ9aSVC781eySrqmP6BM6qG5NluMwgCeOWGO 2hTLMuw1Tx3WGFA6DiS9qt4= =e6Xk -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Hardware RAID Cards..
Just be careful on what card you choose. Aside from simply making sure there are drivers for it, you also have to check on the little things. Like, oh, being able to non-destructively grow the size of the RAID5 array. I bought a Promise SX6000. I have 3 200GB drives that will be in RAID5. If I wish to add a 4th, it can't add it to the array. I have to destory the array and start over. Like I said, the little things. :\ Also, remember that growfs is your friend. Tony On Thu, 26 May 2005, Aaron C. Meadows wrote: Kirk Strauser wrote: On Tuesday 24 May 2005 14:48, Aaron C. Meadows wrote: I'm planning on using RAID 5, since they are kind of small drives, and I'm more interested in reliability and size, than speed. Hmmm - I'd probably look toward a hardware system, then. I've had great luck with software mirroring and striping, but those really don't put a lot of demand on the CPU. If you're also doing database, mail, and PHP on the same system then you'd probably want a bit of external acceleration. Don't everyone jump on this thread all at once.. I won't be able to read it fast enough... =) --aaron ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Output from gpg gpg: Signature made Thu May 26 01:08:23 2005 CDT using DSA key ID DF052C55 gpg: Can't check signature: public key not found ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Hardware RAID Cards..
On Tue, 24 May 2005, Kirk Strauser wrote: On Tuesday 24 May 2005 09:57, Aaron C. Meadows wrote: My question is, since that chipset is unsupported for hardware RAID, would I be better off to software RAID them, or get a different RAID card? What RAID level do you plan on using? Mirroring shouldn't use much CPU, for example, but parity might put a bit of a load on a hard-working system. That's a good question, though. Several cards are listed in the hardware compatibility notes, but they stop short of saying this card is completely supported or stay away from this one. What cards have people had good luck with in practice? I've been using a Promise FastTrak S150 TX2/plus for close to a couple of years now. It supports two parallel and two serial ATA drives. I bought it to support my parallel ATA drives and then I thought I'd migrate to SATA, but I haven't done so yet. I've got two parallel drives in a RAID1 (mirrored) array. This configuration is discouraged by the manufacturer because the drives have to share a cable and failure on one drive will very likely lock up the system, but that's not really important to me. I'm more worried about hardware failure than uninterrupted uptime. I've been using this setup since FreeBSD version 5.2, and I'm currently running 5.4. The dmesg looks like: atapci0: Promise PDC20371 SATA150 controller port 0x9800-0x987f,0x9400-0x940f,0x9000-0x903f mem 0xfb00-0xfb01,0xfb027000-0xfb027fff i q 22 at device 2.0 on pci2 atapci0: failed: rid 0x20 is memory, requested 4 That little failure at the end has always been there in one form or another. It doesn't seem to hinder operation as far as I can tell though. I've only had to use the built-in maintenance utilities once to fix something, and that was after a really bad kernel upgrading accident. It worked fine. Overall I'm happy with this card. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Hardware RAID Cards..
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hi there. I have an IBM Netfinity 5000 server I just picked up, and it has an Adaptec AAA-131U2 (aic7815 chipset) RAID card in it, attached to 5 IBM Branded (Seagate ST39204LC) Hot Swap Ultra160 9.1gig SCSI Harddrives. My question is, since that chipset is unsupported for hardware RAID, would I be better off to software RAID them, or get a different RAID card? Contingent question is, if I should get another RAID card, what would be a good, supported, entry level card? This server will be purposed as a webserver for a small webhosting company, maybe 100 sites on it. Running Postfix,Bind,Apache2,PHP,Postgresql,etc Thanks for the help! - --Aaron -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD4DBQFCk0Ds/mrzqN8FLFURAp15AJUYy2qw69BsB1OrCDk0lLNEjom4AJ4maVRq WzD8N71349KhBLPYy5zrfg== =cxo+ -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Hardware RAID Cards..
On Tuesday 24 May 2005 09:57, Aaron C. Meadows wrote: My question is, since that chipset is unsupported for hardware RAID, would I be better off to software RAID them, or get a different RAID card? What RAID level do you plan on using? Mirroring shouldn't use much CPU, for example, but parity might put a bit of a load on a hard-working system. That's a good question, though. Several cards are listed in the hardware compatibility notes, but they stop short of saying this card is completely supported or stay away from this one. What cards have people had good luck with in practice? -- Kirk Strauser pgpNbFlUGGFoS.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Hardware RAID Cards..
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 I'm planning on using RAID 5, since they are kind of small drives, and I'm more interested in reliability and size, than speed. Kirk Strauser wrote: On Tuesday 24 May 2005 09:57, Aaron C. Meadows wrote: My question is, since that chipset is unsupported for hardware RAID, would I be better off to software RAID them, or get a different RAID card? What RAID level do you plan on using? Mirroring shouldn't use much CPU, for example, but parity might put a bit of a load on a hard-working system. That's a good question, though. Several cards are listed in the hardware compatibility notes, but they stop short of saying this card is completely supported or stay away from this one. What cards have people had good luck with in practice? -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFCk4UX/mrzqN8FLFURAihgAJwPKj/t2osnnkSCWVr/xBFv9fPM5QCfb0zo 5LDwsu+PlD074x37ZGcXohw= =KLh1 -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Hardware RAID Cards..
On Tuesday 24 May 2005 14:48, Aaron C. Meadows wrote: I'm planning on using RAID 5, since they are kind of small drives, and I'm more interested in reliability and size, than speed. Hmmm - I'd probably look toward a hardware system, then. I've had great luck with software mirroring and striping, but those really don't put a lot of demand on the CPU. If you're also doing database, mail, and PHP on the same system then you'd probably want a bit of external acceleration. -- Kirk Strauser pgpoFlqYEoimr.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Hardware RAID 5 - Need vinum?
* Greg 'groggy' Lehey ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: There have been issues with growfs in the past; last time I looked it hadn't been updated to handle UFS 2. If you don't need the UFS 2 functionality, you might be better off using UFS 1 if you intend to grow the file system. growfs gained basic UFS2 support in June 2002 according to the CVS log. It seems pretty unloved; the last interesting commit was 7 months ago (important fixes, still not MFCd) but that's why we have backups, right? :) -- Thomas 'Freaky' Hurst http://hur.st/ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Hardware RAID 5 - Need vinum?
The problem I've had in the past in Windows for example: Drive D: is a RAID5 volume, 400GB, nearly full. If I add a 200GB drive to the array, the 'disk' that Drive D: resides on is now ~600GB, but Drive D: will remain 400GB. I would have to utilize a third party piece of software to resize Drive D: to utilize all 400GB, or create another partition to use that extra 200GB. In my case. /media/video will still only have 400GB available to it. I'm creating one partition on the array with one slice. My understanding then is if I go into the label editor after adding my new drive, I'll have 200GB of free space, and I could create another slice and another mountpoint, but not simply add that additional space to my original slice and mountpoint at /media/video. Now, since I originally posted this message, I did more digging, and found some posts regarding growfs. Perhaps that command is what I'm looking for, and would allow me to grow /media/video to use all 600GB in that case. Now my only concern is whether or not the SX6000 support nondestructively growing a RAID5 array. If I'm right about growfs that is. :) On Wed, 11 May 2005, Subhro wrote: On 5/11/2005 2:35, Tony Shadwick wrote: What my concern is when I start to fill up the ~400GB of space I'm giving myself with this set. I would like to simply insert another 200GB drive and expand the array, allowing the hardware raid to do the work. That is what everybody does. It is very much normal. The problem I see with this is that yes, the /dev/(raid driver name)0 will now be that much larger, however the original partition size and the subsequent slices will still be the original size. I could not understand what you meant by RAID device entry would be larger. The various entries inside the /dev are nothing but sort of handles to the various devices present in the system. If you want to manipulate or utilize some device for a particular device present on your box from a particular application, then you can reference the same using the handles in the /dev. And the handles remains the same in size irrespective of whether you have 1 hard disk or 100 hard disks in some kind of RAID. Do I need to (and is there a way?) to utilize vinum and still allow the hardware raid controller to do the raid5 gruntwork and still have the ability to arbitrarily grow the volume as needed? The only other solution I see is to use vinum to software-raid the set of drives, leaving it as a glorified ATA controller card, and the cpu/ram of the card unitilized and burden the system CPU and RAM with the task. The main idea in favor of using Hardware RAID solutions over software RAID solutions is you can let the CPU do things which are more worthwhile than managing I/O. The I/O can be well handled and is indeed better handled by the chip on the RAID controller card than the CPU. If you add another disk to your RAID or replace a dead disk at any point of time, then the RAID card should automatically detect the change and rebuild the volumes as and when required. This would be completely transparent to the OS and sometimes also transparent to the user. Regards S. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Hardware RAID 5 - Need vinum?
On 5/11/2005 19:33, Tony Shadwick wrote: The problem I've had in the past in Windows for example: Drive D: is a RAID5 volume, 400GB, nearly full. If I add a 200GB drive to the array, the 'disk' that Drive D: resides on is now ~600GB, but Drive D: will remain 400GB. I would have to utilize a third party piece of software to resize Drive D: to utilize all 400GB, or create another partition to use that extra 200GB. In my case. /media/video will still only have 400GB available to it. I'm creating one partition on the array with one slice. My understanding then is if I go into the label editor after adding my new drive, I'll have 200GB of free space, and I could create another slice and another mountpoint, but not simply add that additional space to my original slice and mountpoint at /media/video. Now, since I originally posted this message, I did more digging, and found some posts regarding growfs. Perhaps that command is what I'm looking for, and would allow me to grow /media/video to use all 600GB in that case. Now my only concern is whether or not the SX6000 support nondestructively growing a RAID5 array. If I'm right about growfs that is. :) You have already answered your question :). BTW kindly do not top post and wrap up mails at 72 characters. IT really creates a mess in my text mode client :(. Regards S. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Hardware RAID 5 - Need vinum?
On Wed, 11 May 2005, Subhro wrote: On 5/11/2005 19:33, Tony Shadwick wrote: The problem I've had in the past in Windows for example: Drive D: is a RAID5 volume, 400GB, nearly full. If I add a 200GB drive to the array, the 'disk' that Drive D: resides on is now ~600GB, but Drive D: will remain 400GB. I would have to utilize a third party piece of software to resize Drive D: to utilize all 400GB, or create another partition to use that extra 200GB. In my case. /media/video will still only have 400GB available to it. I'm creating one partition on the array with one slice. My understanding then is if I go into the label editor after adding my new drive, I'll have 200GB of free space, and I could create another slice and another mountpoint, but not simply add that additional space to my original slice and mountpoint at /media/video. Now, since I originally posted this message, I did more digging, and found some posts regarding growfs. Perhaps that command is what I'm looking for, and would allow me to grow /media/video to use all 600GB in that case. Now my only concern is whether or not the SX6000 support nondestructively growing a RAID5 array. If I'm right about growfs that is. :) You have already answered your question :). BTW kindly do not top post and wrap up mails at 72 characters. IT really creates a mess in my text mode client :(. Regards S. Nani? I'm using pine in it's default config. Totally bizarre. I'll look into though. Thanks for the help! Tony ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Hardware RAID 5 - Need vinum?
On Tuesday, 10 May 2005 at 16:05:50 -0500, Tony Shadwick wrote: I've worked with RAID5 in FreeBSD in the past, with either vinum or a hardware raid solution. Never had any problems either way. I'm now building a server for myself at home, and I'm creating a large volume to store video. I have purchased 3 200GB EIDE hard drives, and a 6 channel Promise SX6000 ATA RAID controller. I know how to set up a RAID5 set, and create a mountpoint (say /media/video). What my concern is when I start to fill up the ~400GB of space I'm giving myself with this set. I would like to simply insert another 200GB drive and expand the array, allowing the hardware raid to do the work. The problem I see with this is that yes, the /dev/(raid driver name)0 will now be that much larger, however the original partition size and the subsequent slices will still be the original size. Do I need to (and is there a way?) to utilize vinum and still allow the hardware raid controller to do the raid5 gruntwork and still have the ability to arbitrarily grow the volume as needed? The only other solution I see is to use vinum to software-raid the set of drives, leaving it as a glorified ATA controller card, and the cpu/ram of the card unitilized and burden the system CPU and RAM with the task. What you need here is not Vinum (which would replace the hardware RAID array), but growfs. You'd need that with Vinum as well. There have been issues with growfs in the past; last time I looked it hadn't been updated to handle UFS 2. If you don't need the UFS 2 functionality, you might be better off using UFS 1 if you intend to grow the file system. Greg -- When replying to this message, please copy the original recipients. If you don't, I may ignore the reply or reply to the original recipients. For more information, see http://www.lemis.com/questions.html See complete headers for address and phone numbers ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Hardware RAID 5 - Need vinum?
I've worked with RAID5 in FreeBSD in the past, with either vinum or a hardware raid solution. Never had any problems either way. I'm now building a server for myself at home, and I'm creating a large volume to store video. I have purchased 3 200GB EIDE hard drives, and a 6 channel Promise SX6000 ATA RAID controller. I know how to set up a RAID5 set, and create a mountpoint (say /media/video). What my concern is when I start to fill up the ~400GB of space I'm giving myself with this set. I would like to simply insert another 200GB drive and expand the array, allowing the hardware raid to do the work. The problem I see with this is that yes, the /dev/(raid driver name)0 will now be that much larger, however the original partition size and the subsequent slices will still be the original size. Do I need to (and is there a way?) to utilize vinum and still allow the hardware raid controller to do the raid5 gruntwork and still have the ability to arbitrarily grow the volume as needed? The only other solution I see is to use vinum to software-raid the set of drives, leaving it as a glorified ATA controller card, and the cpu/ram of the card unitilized and burden the system CPU and RAM with the task. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Hardware RAID 5 - Need vinum?
On 5/11/2005 2:35, Tony Shadwick wrote: What my concern is when I start to fill up the ~400GB of space I'm giving myself with this set. I would like to simply insert another 200GB drive and expand the array, allowing the hardware raid to do the work. That is what everybody does. It is very much normal. The problem I see with this is that yes, the /dev/(raid driver name)0 will now be that much larger, however the original partition size and the subsequent slices will still be the original size. I could not understand what you meant by RAID device entry would be larger. The various entries inside the /dev are nothing but sort of handles to the various devices present in the system. If you want to manipulate or utilize some device for a particular device present on your box from a particular application, then you can reference the same using the handles in the /dev. And the handles remains the same in size irrespective of whether you have 1 hard disk or 100 hard disks in some kind of RAID. Do I need to (and is there a way?) to utilize vinum and still allow the hardware raid controller to do the raid5 gruntwork and still have the ability to arbitrarily grow the volume as needed? The only other solution I see is to use vinum to software-raid the set of drives, leaving it as a glorified ATA controller card, and the cpu/ram of the card unitilized and burden the system CPU and RAM with the task. The main idea in favor of using Hardware RAID solutions over software RAID solutions is you can let the CPU do things which are more worthwhile than managing I/O. The I/O can be well handled and is indeed better handled by the chip on the RAID controller card than the CPU. If you add another disk to your RAID or replace a dead disk at any point of time, then the RAID card should automatically detect the change and rebuild the volumes as and when required. This would be completely transparent to the OS and sometimes also transparent to the user. Regards S. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Hardware RAID
On Fri, Jan 21, 2005 at 11:42:32PM -0800, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: Stijn Hoop said: Ted Mittelstaedt [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: This did teach me a lesson that I kind of knew already but didn't think too much about. That is, a software array is no substitute for a hardware array. ... I respectfully disagree here; it is a substitute in some respects, especially if you factor in cost. I think you didn't read my post, Well I tried to... I explicitly stated vinum is a great thing if what your wanting to do is use a bunch of cheap disks and cheap controller cards to either get a giant partition, or to stripe them together and get faster access. Yes, but that's what I was refuting in part; I've used it for reliability purposes to great effect, as I stated. So IMHO it's also a great thing if you need reliability for a lower price. In other words cost is the only justification for selecting software raid over hardware raid. You haven't really made the case that vinum is better than a hardware array card on any other issue except cost. It was not my intent to describe vinum as being 'better' than the hardware RAID. As I read it, you dismissed software RAID for reliability purposes. I was stating that it can be used for that purpose. My vinum volumes allowed me to survive for a long time without backups (bad idea, don't do that), and for the past years have allowed me to survive without having to restore my backups. This through about 5 failing ATA disks and multiple upgrades of the storage space. I'd say it was worth it for me, including reliability. If you need speed, or have the cash, etc, you can go for hardware RAID. But even there I've seen and heard horror stories of incompatible disks, spontaneously lost configurations or even worse, silent data corruption due to a bad disk. I didn't say these things couldn't happen on a hardware array. I said that when these things do happen, it's worse for a software array than a hardware array, and that they happen a lot more on a software array. In my experience, when bad things happen, it was the same for the software RAID arrays as for the hardware RAID arrays. Regular vinum does have a few warts (notably, online rebuilding is b0rked) but other than that it's the same procedure: remove bad drive, add new drive, rebuild. I agree that I've seen more failures with software RAID than hardware RAID. And certainly cost is a factor in that. It still comes down to cost vs downtime. The only thing I 'objected' to in your post was the fact that you dismissed vinum as being useful in reliability situations. I hope I made that clearer this time. --Stijn -- Well, Brahma said, even after ten thousand explanations, a fool is no wiser, but an intelligent man requires only two thousand five hundred. -- The Mahabharata. pgplzr1GSkzaG.pgp Description: PGP signature
RE: Hardware RAID
-Original Message- From: Stijn Hoop [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, January 22, 2005 1:01 AM To: Ted Mittelstaedt Cc: Sandy Rutherford; FreeBSD Questions Subject: Re: Hardware RAID I explicitly stated vinum is a great thing if what your wanting to do is use a bunch of cheap disks and cheap controller cards to either get a giant partition, or to stripe them together and get faster access. Yes, but that's what I was refuting in part; I've used it for reliability purposes to great effect, as I stated. So IMHO it's also a great thing if you need reliability for a lower price. Well that may be so but RAID reliability is kind of like this: if there's 10 people running it and 9 of them have no problems and one of them does, then be very afraid! You might be that 10th person. The desirable situation with RAID reliability is to have all 10 people with no problems, and a series of vague rumors that someone heard that a friend of a friend might of had a problem, then when you bother chasing it down you find the person was smoking pipeweed. Another way of saying it is that my kernel crashdump file of a blown-up vinum install that blew my array - which is online for anyone to download if they so choose as I post this - is worth 500 of your testimonals about how reliable vinum is. It was not my intent to describe vinum as being 'better' than the hardware RAID. As I read it, you dismissed software RAID for reliability purposes. I do. From a structural standpoint a lot more things can go wrong with it. I was stating that it can be used for that purpose. My crashdump file says raid isn't a reliable means of getting out of having to backup your data. I didn't say these things couldn't happen on a hardware array. I said that when these things do happen, it's worse for a software array than a hardware array, and that they happen a lot more on a software array. In my experience, when bad things happen, it was the same for the software RAID arrays as for the hardware RAID arrays. How many hardware arrays vs software arrays do you deal with? Over the last decade I think I've directly admined about 20-30 different makes and models of hardware array cards in different servers. I've lost about 3 disks in those. Admittedly not a lot. But so far I've never had one that lost a disk where replacing the disk didn't recover the array. Oh sure, some of them you had to do some really stupid things like take the server down completely for half the day to do it. But they all came back. During this time I've admined exactly 3 servers on software arrays. One was a news server using ccd which ran for years. The other are 2 vinum servers one of which is going strong, the other blew up due to a bad SCSI cable which wrote garbage on 2 drives making the array unrecoverable. In my experience if the reliabilty was equal, none of the software arrays should have given trouble and one or two of the hardware ones should have blown. Now granted in my vinum case the scsi cable is at fault. But, the log clearly shows vinum trying a write to one disk, getting a parity error, trying a write to another, getting another parity error, then the server freezing. The problem with vinum in this instance wasn't the initial parity errors and freezing. In fact, THAT was exactly what should have happend - shut the works down before you write garbage over the entire disk. The problem was that after a very simple error like that only a few blocks of data on the disks would have been bad so the vinum manager should have been able to recover the array to the point that it could be mounted again, so that fsck could have ripped out a handful of files and got the disk clean. Could this same have happend with a hardware array card? Probably. But I would be betting that the recovery routines in any hardware raid could have got the array to the point that a higher level tool like fsck could have got at least some data off it. And in any case, regardless of whether using software or hardware arrays, you should be backing up. I didn't with my software array and data was lost (fortunately not my data, and I don't know if the people who had data on it were backing their data up, they were supposed to, but I don't trust anyone on that) So I was stupid. Don't you or anyone else be stupid - learn from my mistake. Regular vinum does have a few warts (notably, online rebuilding is b0rked) but other than that it's the same procedure: remove bad drive, add new drive, rebuild. I agree that I've seen more failures with software RAID than hardware RAID. And certainly cost is a factor in that. It still comes down to cost vs downtime. What? I don't think I understand what your saying with that statement. RAID when used for reliability is because you cannot be backing up continuously - for example you have a database server that is receiving writes throughout the day, you raid it because you
Re: Hardware RAID
On Thu, Jan 20, 2005 at 05:22:36AM -0800, Sandy Rutherford wrote: On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 22:57:21 -0800, Ted Mittelstaedt [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: This did teach me a lesson that I kind of knew already but didn't think too much about. That is, a software array is no substitute for a hardware array. ... I respectfully disagree here; it is a substitute in some respects, especially if you factor in cost. My vinum volumes allowed me to survive for a long time without backups (bad idea, don't do that), and for the past years have allowed me to survive without having to restore my backups. This through about 5 failing ATA disks and multiple upgrades of the storage space. I'd say it was worth it for me, including reliability. If you need speed, or have the cash, etc, you can go for hardware RAID. But even there I've seen and heard horror stories of incompatible disks, spontaneously lost configurations or even worse, silent data corruption due to a bad disk. I've setup a gvinum mirrored system also, and tried booting it without one of the disks -- you don't need geom_vinum for that so it *is* self sufficient in case of failures. As always, choose the tool that's of best use to you. --Stijn -- An adult is a child who has more ethics and morals, that's all. -- Shigeru Miyamoto pgpb01sgQ9cNh.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Hardware RAID
On Jan 21, 2005, at 4:02 AM, Stijn Hoop wrote: On Thu, Jan 20, 2005 at 05:22:36AM -0800, Sandy Rutherford wrote: On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 22:57:21 -0800, Ted Mittelstaedt [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: This did teach me a lesson that I kind of knew already but didn't think too much about. That is, a software array is no substitute for a hardware array. ... I respectfully disagree here; it is a substitute in some respects, especially if you factor in cost. My vinum volumes allowed me to survive for a long time without backups (bad idea, don't do that), and for the past years have allowed me to survive without having to restore my backups. This through about 5 failing ATA disks and multiple upgrades of the storage space. I'd say it was worth it for me, including reliability. If you need speed, or have the cash, etc, you can go for hardware RAID. But even there I've seen and heard horror stories of incompatible disks, spontaneously lost configurations or even worse, silent data corruption due to a bad disk. Just to interject such a tale, since we just had to put up with it... This was with a Windows 2000 server on a Dell with a Perc 3/di RAID controller, using four drives in a RAID 5 array. We came in to find that one of the disks had gone bad and the server was blinking red. Disk 2 was dead. Not a problem, with the Dells with a Perc card you just call it in, they send a new drive, you remove the bad and insert the new and it should start rebuilding! The wonder of hardware RAID...hot swap rebuilding to minimize downtime. Well...it wouldn't rebuild. Go around with the tech a couple times, and then ran the onboard diagnostics on the RAID controller...disk 2 was brand new, of course, so it was blank. Disk 3 kept showing about five bad blocks on it. Turns out that sometimes disks will have bad blocks that the array controller can't repair (even though in the utilities it would run the repair and not give any indication that the repair didn't work), and it didn't warn about the bad blocks either; those bad blocks will prevent the controller from rebuilding the array. The only solution? Make a full backup, replace the other drive as well, then rebuild the volume from scratch and restore your data. But hey, who needs a weekend anyway? :-) Hardware RAID should keep you running for awhile, but in this case, it was only a stopgap to buy some time. Like I said, this just happened to us, so thought I'd share. -Bart ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Hardware RAID
-Original Message- From: Stijn Hoop [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, January 21, 2005 1:02 AM To: Sandy Rutherford; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: FreeBSD Questions Subject: Re: Hardware RAID On Thu, Jan 20, 2005 at 05:22:36AM -0800, Sandy Rutherford wrote: On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 22:57:21 -0800, Ted Mittelstaedt [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: This did teach me a lesson that I kind of knew already but didn't think too much about. That is, a software array is no substitute for a hardware array. ... I respectfully disagree here; it is a substitute in some respects, especially if you factor in cost. I think you didn't read my post, I explicitly stated vinum is a great thing if what your wanting to do is use a bunch of cheap disks and cheap controller cards to either get a giant partition, or to stripe them together and get faster access. In other words cost is the only justification for selecting software raid over hardware raid. You haven't really made the case that vinum is better than a hardware array card on any other issue except cost. My vinum volumes allowed me to survive for a long time without backups (bad idea, don't do that), and for the past years have allowed me to survive without having to restore my backups. This through about 5 failing ATA disks and multiple upgrades of the storage space. I'd say it was worth it for me, including reliability. If you need speed, or have the cash, etc, you can go for hardware RAID. But even there I've seen and heard horror stories of incompatible disks, spontaneously lost configurations or even worse, silent data corruption due to a bad disk. I didn't say these things couldn't happen on a hardware array. I said that when these things do happen, it's worse for a software array than a hardware array, and that they happen a lot more on a software array. Ted ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Hardware RAID Support (was RE: One Last Plea For Vinum Assistance)
On Thu, Jan 20, 2005 at 05:22:36AM -0800, Sandy Rutherford wrote: On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 22:57:21 -0800, Ted Mittelstaedt [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: This did teach me a lesson that I kind of knew already but didn't think too much about. That is, a software array is no substitute for a hardware array. ... Agreed completely, which leads me to my question. Does anybody know what the plans are for the SCSI hardware raid controllers vis a vis CAM? I have a Mylex Extreme RAID 1100, which uses the mlx(4) driver. The mlx(4) driver does not use CAM, whereas its cousin the mly(4) driver does interact with CAM. I corresponded with Michael Smith, the principal author of both drivers, a while ago and he told me that it was a pain in the neck to integrate mly(4) with CAM and he did not forsee this ever being done for mlx(2). One side-effect of this is that although the RAID setup utility for the card does allow a channel(s) to be designated a plain non-RAID SCSI channel for use by a tape drive or CDROM, the FreeBSD driver does not support this. Also, the mlxcontrol(8) facility is a little on the basic side, with most of the capabilities of the card not supported. My main point is that support for SCSI hardware RAID seems to be a bit of a dog's breakfast at the moment and are there plans to brings things together? BTW: 1. Please do not ask me to donate a card to the developers. I don't have a spare. However, I know how the game is played and I am not asking anybody to donate their time to my problems. My only serious problem was a bug in mlxcontrol, for which I submitted a PR, with a patch. 2. If anybody is looking for a hardware RAID card, I can recommend the Extreme RAID 1100. It's a triple channel U2W card. I got mine for a song on Ebay. Note that it is definitely worth the trouble to update to the latest version of the firmware. Sandy, there are Hardware RAID implementations that do not need special controllers. The array is free-standing, and presents to the host what looks like simple disks, and hides mirroring, RAID-parity, striping, scrubbing, and other integrity functions behind that layer of abstraction. I know that there are people that are using such arrays as these (even EMC Symmetrix, which is very costly) on FreeBSD systems, because FreeBSD just thinks that they are just simple (but extremely fast and reliable:) ) disks. Even CDW has such under the covers hardware arrays for sale. You don't need ANY special support in FreeBSD to use some of them. Be ware, though! Some of them, for reasons beyond my ability to phathom, do require custom HBA drivers! That's right - standard HBA hardware and firmware - but custom drivers. Maddening. Make sure you understand what you are buying, because FreeBSD probably won't be on their support matrix, even though they will work find together. That's nothing new - FreeBSD is not on the support matrix of 90% of the hardware we use. Sadly, we're just not on the radar screen for many of these companies. FreeBSD has two problems in this regard - and if I were in a decision-making capacity with a large company, I'd be donating equipment and money to make these happen: 1) Some intelligent subsystems of this nature (EMC CLARiiON, EMC Symmetrix, Hitachi Thunder, LSI, Xiotech Magnitude) are moving to all FC-SW implementations, or at least, FC-AL, though FC-AL, whether real or simulated (QuickLoop simulates FC-AL on Brocade switches, for instance) does have some support in FreeBSD. FreeBSD's fibre support is, um, limited. A driver has been written for QLogic controllers that use the isp chip, but it's not clear to me yet whether it supports FC-SW and FC-AL, or FC-AL only. I can find some documentation that only mentions FC-AL, and other documetation that seems to hint otherwise - I'm actually in the process of trying to hook up an EMC CLARiiON through a Brocade switch to some Q-Logic cards now. FreeBSD has no support for other FC HBA's. 2) FreeBSD does not have, as nearly as I can tell, any sort of path management software. That is, there's no support for presenting the same volume down multiple HBA's and either coordinating the access or using one as active and the other as standby. (Greg - if vinum does this, my apologies - I haven't seen what I recognized as this functionality.) What I'm talking about here is like HP PV-LINKS, AIX MPIO, Veritas Volume Manager DMP (Dynamic Multi-Pathing), DG/EMC ATF (Automated Transparent Failover), or EMC PowerPath. I think that Linux benefits from Veritas DMP (if you buy the license), but I'm not sure about that. This message comes at a very interesting time. I am, actually, in a position to donate some FibreChannel switches, and I was about to write to the author of the ISP driver to see if he, or someone he knows, could put them to good use in the development of any
Hardware Raid question
Hello, I have a 5.2 FBSD system with a highpoint ATA raid controller and 2 x WD 200 ATA HD's. I created a Raid 1 array in the HP bios. dmesg output: ad4: 194481MB Maxtor 6B200P0 [395136/16/63] at ata2-master UDMA133 GEOM: create disk ad6 dp=0xc485b860 ad6: 194481MB Maxtor 6B200P0 [395136/16/63] at ata3-master UDMA133 GEOM: create disk ar0 dp=0xc4766de0 ar0: 194480MB ATA RAID1 array [24792/255/63] status: READY subdisks: disk0 READY on ad4 at ata2-master disk1 READY on ad6 at ata3-master Mounting root from ufs:/dev/ad4s1a I installed everything on 'ad4' but it I think I wanted to install it to 'ar0'. Am I right? Thanks. -- Jason ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Hardware Raid question
Jason Lieurance wrote: I installed everything on 'ad4' but it I think I wanted to install it to 'ar0'. Am I right? Thanks. Yep, ar is the Atapi Raid driver, ad is just the individual disk :) -- Mike Woods IT Technician ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Hardware Raid question
Mike Woods wrote: Yep, ar is the Atapi Raid driver, ad is just the individual disk :) s/Atapi/ata/ Less haste, more coffee, the key to better typing. -- Mike Woods IT Technician ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Hardware Raid question
Mike Woods said: Jason Lieurance wrote: I installed everything on 'ad4' but it I think I wanted to install it to 'ar0'. Am I right? Thanks. Yep, ar is the Atapi Raid driver, ad is just the individual disk :) -- Mike Woods IT Technician Why does the os even detect the individual drives when the raid card made it a single drive and the os install is after the raid bios??? Thanks for the help. -- Jason ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Hardware Raid question
Why does the os even detect the individual drives when the raid card made it a single drive and the os install is after the raid bios??? Because the chipset provides means to control both single disks and arrays thus you get both, just the way that card chose to do things :) - Mike Woods IT Technician ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Hardware Raid question
On Tue, Jan 18, 2005 at 07:58:59PM +, Mike Woods wrote: Why does the os even detect the individual drives when the raid card made it a single drive and the os install is after the raid bios??? Because the chipset provides means to control both single disks and arrays thus you get both, just the way that card chose to do things :) - Mike Woods IT Technician Question on this... I noted that if I come up on the fixit disk, I can use atacontrol to 'create' a RAID1 array across two disks with ONLY the motherboard IDE controller! It also APPEARS to read/write to both disks - and if I disconnect one of them, intentionally failing it, it also appears to do the 'right thing' and keep running in degraded mode too! However, a rebuild (once one 'replaces' the dead disk) instantly returns and does nothing. Is it thus correct to conclude that the DRIVER abstracts the RAID1 function internally, and that the only thing you lose is the ability to replace/recopy the array? That is, in the event of a failure you could dump the remaining (good) disk, replace the bad, re-initialize the array and then copy it back - you'd lose hot rebuilds, but not the inherent protection of the mirroring. Am I missing something here? -- -- Karl Denninger ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Internet Consultant Kids Rights Activist http://www.denninger.netMy home on the net - links to everything I do! http://scubaforum.org Your UNCENSORED place to talk about DIVING! http://www.spamcuda.net SPAM FREE mailboxes - FREE FOR A LIMITED TIME! http://genesis3.blogspot.comMusings Of A Sentient Mind ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
hardware raid with fbsd 5.3
Hello everybody I am about to install a machine with a hardware raid. I am using a Promise Fasttrack TX4000 controller. So far I have been using FBSD 4.9 for all kinds of purposes, but the release notes show me that my controller is not supportet (I also tries and it does not work, or at least I can not find the stripped hard drives anywhere) The 5.2.1 release notes show me that it is supported, but everybody tells me not to use any 5.2 releases. I would like to use 5.3 but unfortunately my controller does not show up there in the supported hardware list. What would you guys recommend to do?? Thanks a lot in advance Olaf Olaf Stein Research Scholar OSU Medical Center Department of Radiology Division of Imaging Research phone:614-293-9983 cell: 614-589-9229 ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
replacing a failed drive with hardware raid ...
never having done it before, I don't know how to do it :( vinum is easy ... replace the drive, make sure its partitioned right and start it ... I have an IIR controller, with the storcon utility from the command line ... drive 3 has failed, and I have a 'good drive' in slot 6 that is sitting idle ... the server is hot-swapable, so I should just need to pull out drive 3, put drive 6 in ... but what do I have to do in storcon to tell it to 'rebuild/start' the new drive? Thanks ... Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664 ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-scsi To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
