Re: RAID-5 and database servers
On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 11:26 AM, J. Epperson d...@epperson.homelinux.net wrote: On Thu, March 11, 2010 11:17, Dan Pritts wrote: On Tue, Mar 09, 2010 at 04:54:44PM -0600, John G. Heim wrote: Has anyone configured a database server with RAID-5? Is it really a bad idea http://www.orafaq.com/wiki/RAID Which says that unless money is no object, go with RAID 5. Actually it says if money is no object, go with RAID 10: http://www.orafaq.com/wiki/RAID#RAID_10 RAID 10 is the ideal RAID level in terms of performance and availability, but it can be expensive as it requires at least twice the amount of disk space. If money is no objective, always choose RAID 10! I would agree with the RAID 10 recommendation. I at one time did a lot of RAID 5 to try to comprimise price vs performance, but had several array failures resulting in having to restore from backup. Now, I put anything important on either RAID 1, or RAID 10. Basically I use RAID 1 if it needs to be reliable and RAID 10 if it needs to be reliable and fast. Preston ___ Linux-PowerEdge mailing list Linux-PowerEdge@dell.com https://lists.us.dell.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-poweredge Please read the FAQ at http://lists.us.dell.com/faq
Re: Third-party drives not permitted on Gen 11 servers
On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 2:01 PM, Peter Kjellstrom c...@nsc.liu.se wrote: On Tuesday 09 February 2010, William Warren wrote: On 2/9/2010 5:17 PM, howard_sho...@dell.com wrote: Thank you very much for your comments and feedback regarding exclusive use of Dell drives. It is common practice in enterprise storage solutions to limit drive support to only those drives which have been qualified by the vendor. In the case of Dell's PERC RAID controllers, we began informing customers when a non-Dell drive was detected with the introduction of PERC5 RAID controllers in early 2006. With the introduction of the PERC H700/H800 controllers, we began enabling only the use of Dell qualified drives. There are a number of benefits for using Dell qualified drives in particular ensuring a positive experience and protecting our data. ... This is common reasoning given for any vendor that starts practicing lock-in. Dell has just gone down that road. I'll either not buy Dell servers OR order them without your controllers and use some of my own. If they'll allow you to use non-Dell controllers... /Peter As an anecdote, the company I worked for ordered a MD1000. We are a fairly small company with 6 servers (some Dell, some not) in production. Like some of the other people who have posted to this list, we have to keep using our servers as long as they are working and can perfom the required tasks. We don't get to buy new ones just because our warranty ends or there is something new and shiny out. At the time we ordered our MD1000, we had two, new 1U HP servers that were not in use and were more than adequte for our needs. Before ordering the MD1000, we had Dell staff confirm to use that it had standard SAS connections. We bought a couple of LSI SAS cards (knowing that the PERCs were basically rebranded LSI cards with Dell mojo installed on them) and ordered the MD1000. Since the MD1000 would be responsible for our most important data and databases, we got the highest level of support offered (24x7 4 hour on-site response) on it. We used it for a while with no issues and even used our own drives in addition to the 2 we originally ordered from Dell with it. All was well until it stopped seeing any new drives we put into it. We called Dell support. We were first told that since were running a non-Dell supported Linux (ubuntu) that we would have to boot to their Live CD to do testing, which we did. We did a little testing with no immediate clues as to the issue and were then told that since we were using a non-Dell server, it wouldn't be supported. We got a Dell server and hooked it up with one of our LSI cards. We were then told that since we didn't have a Dell PERC card in it, it wasn't supported, so we switched in a PERC card. Then we were told it wouldn't be supported because we didn't have drives from Dell with Dell firmware in it. Luckally after all this time, we figured out the issue (you can't combine SAS and SATA drives on the same enclosure side without the Dell firmware and their special interposer boards), so we just told Dell to forget it and split the enclosure and used SAS in half and SATA in the other half. What this taught us is that unless we were 100% Dell solutions all the way thorugh, we could expect no help from them, so we just didn't renew our MD1000 service contract and never buy any upgraded service plans anymore. As many have said, if they want to not support third party drives or even have a warning that goes by at boot or something, that is fine, but they should still allow the drives. It is my opinion (and maybe I am wrong) that a large majority of Dell's server business is small to medium businesses. Basically the people who can't afford IBM, Sun, high-end HP, etc. but need a few, good reliable servers. If they decide to commit to this route where they are the sole provider for drives, then I know my company will have to look elsewhere. The crazy markup plus the fact that I can't be guarenteed that I will still be able to get a drive at a reasonable price in a few years makes it where I couldn't commit. I know my company probably doesn't matter a lot to Dell, we probably only buy 1-2 servers a year at most and maybe 2-3 desktops, but if every small business similar to mine starts switching, I would bet that would start to add up. Anyway, it will be interesting to see how this plays out. Preston ___ Linux-PowerEdge mailing list Linux-PowerEdge@dell.com https://lists.us.dell.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-poweredge Please read the FAQ at http://lists.us.dell.com/faq
Re: Nagios Permissions: PERC3/Di and afacli script
On Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 10:20 AM, Steve Jenkins ste...@cheatcodes.comwrote: I'm having a heck of a time getting an afacli monitoring script to work properly via nrpe in Nagios. The server is a 2960 running CentOS 5.4. Via nrpe, I am successfully able to run the check_afacli script from here: http://www.techno-obscura.com/~delgado/notes/sles9-NagiosAfacli.htmlhttp://www.techno-obscura.com/%7Edelgado/notes/sles9-NagiosAfacli.html . The problem is that check_afacli.pl script doesn't spit out enough info, and I'd rather use the check_raid.pl script from here: http://www.ibnads.com/afacli-nagios/ When I run the check_raid.pl script on the monitored box (as root), it works fine and spits out a bunch of info I want to monitor. When I run it via nrpe, it just says 0 Containers Critical which is know is incorrect. All the scripts state that in order to operate correctly, they have to be run as root. However, the check_afacli script runs just fine remotely, even without the nagios user in the sudoers file. I've added the nagios user to the sudoers file, but still can't get the check_raid.pl script to work. While tinkering around with a few other scripts, I can tell that afacli (when called via the script through nrpe) doesn't have sufficient permissions to open the container to query status. But what stumps me is why the check_afacli.pl script works fine, and the check_raid.pl script (which is the one I really want) doesn't! Anyone been down this road before care to offer some suggestions? Thanks, Steve A couple of extra things to check that you may or may not have tried: What happens if you try running the check_raid.pl script as the nagios user when logged into the machine (ssh in, su -s /bin/bash nagios, whoami (to confirm that you did switch to the nagios user) and then run the script)? What does your line in your sudoers file look like? Here is my line so that nagios can run the check_megaraid_sas nagios script I have to check our PERC 5/i card: nagios ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_megaraid_sas Did you make sure to edit the sudoers file using visudo and not normal vi, emacs or something else? My guess, without looking in detail at the scripts, is that the check_raid script requires some extra permissions that the check_afacli script doesn't. Hopefully some of this might help. Preston ___ Linux-PowerEdge mailing list Linux-PowerEdge@dell.com https://lists.us.dell.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-poweredge Please read the FAQ at http://lists.us.dell.com/faq
Re: SAS5/E with MD1000 for JBOD
On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 4:22 PM, Philip Tait phi...@subaru.naoj.org wrote: On 12/17/2009 11:39 AM, Jose-Marcio Martins da Cruz wrote: Philip Tait wrote: We want to attach an MD1000 to a PE2900 in a non -RAID configuration. The Dell sales people are very convinced that we have to have a PERC6/E to connect an MD1000, but they are doing further research. We have two MD1000 attached to a PE2950. We have a PERC5/E. With the PERC5/E you can have RAID 0 (stripe). So, if I understood what you're wanting, you shall be able to create one RAID 0 volume for each disk, or a single RAID0 for all disks. Thanks for the response, but I believe this would not work for our application because the disks would require a PERC-equipped computer for them to be readable. We want these drives to be readable on any PC with a SATA interface. Honestly (an maybe someone can correct me) I don't think it is possible. I have pretty much never found a way to connect drives with a PERC5/E and MD1000 or even connected directly to a PERC5/i for that matter that doesn't add Dell mojo in between. The best solution we found was to buy multiple PERC cards, save the configs once we had everything like we wanted it (doing RAID 0 on the hard drives to fake JBOD), and then loading that config on other machines to be backups. Still, if the MD1000 went out, we still might be up a creek. Although I generally love Dell hardware, it is one drawback I have found to the MD1000 and PERC cards is that they want their Dell specific voodoo in between. We have even found that just buying drives for a third party vendor will seem to work sometimes, but often lead to flakiness. Apparently they all have to be matched drives with Dell firmware on the drives themselves to be fully supported (or at least that is what we have been told). Anyway, I hope you have better luck that we have. Preston ___ Linux-PowerEdge mailing list Linux-PowerEdge@dell.com https://lists.us.dell.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-poweredge Please read the FAQ at http://lists.us.dell.com/faq
