Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2006 23:38:57 +0000 From: Scott Mitchell <scott+lists.freebsd@fishballoon.org> To: Vivek Khera <vivek@khera.org> Cc: freebsd-stable <freebsd-stable@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: 6.0 on Dell 1850 with PERC4e/DC RAID? Message-ID: <20060106233857.GA997@tuatara.fishballoon.org> In-Reply-To: <A90761EB-CCE9-45BE-A8BF-64E22C9D5799@khera.org> References: <20060105224150.GA991@tuatara.fishballoon.org> <A90761EB-CCE9-45BE-A8BF-64E22C9D5799@khera.org>
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On Fri, Jan 06, 2006 at 10:35:46AM -0500, Vivek Khera wrote: > > On Jan 5, 2006, at 5:41 PM, Scott Mitchell wrote: > > >I may be getting a new Dell PE1850 soon, to replace our ancient CVS > >server > >(still running 4-STABLE). The new machine will ideally run 6.0 and > >have a > >PERC4e/DC RAID card - the one with battery-backed cache. This is > >listed as > > I have an 1850 with the buil-in PERC 4e/Si since all I needed was the > RAID1 mirror of the internal drives. It works extremely well, and > the speed is quite good. We'll only be mirroring the internal drives too for now - the 4e/DC seems to be the only RAID option on the 1850 with battery-backed cache, and doesn't cost much more for the extra peace-of-mind. > As for notices of when the drives go bad, under 4.x I've had disk > failures with the amr driver (different PERC cards) and not gotten > any such notices in the syslog that I recall. That's a pity. Maybe Doug was thinking of one of the aac(4) based PERC cards? Still, something I can run out of cron to check the array status should be fine. > I did find a program > posted to one of the freebsd lists called 'amrstat' that I run > nightly. It produces this kind of output: > > Drive 0: 68.24 GB, RAID1 <writeback,no-read-ahead,no-adaptative- > io> optimal > > If it says "degraded" it is time to fix a drive. You just fire up > the lsi megaraid tools and find out which drive it is. > > If you go to the LSI download area, they have one file for FreeBSD, > which is labeled the driver. In that zip file is also the management > software for freebsd. You'll want that. Personally, I like the > "MEGAMGR" software which was released for freebsd 4.x and mimics the > BIOS' interface in a terminal window. There's a port of the management software now: sysutils/megarc > The rebuild on LSI controllers is set to automatic on the dells as > default. It just works as expected. Cool. > Overall, I'm a big fan of the LSI cards and the amr driver... > > Unfortunately for me, the latest equipment I just got only takes low- > profile cards, and LSI doesn't offer a dual channel RAID card in low- > profile configuration... so I need to look at adaptec. This is on your x4100? Nice machine. We have a v20z with dual Opteron 270s that I totally love. Looking at getting an x4100 too... sadly these are product development machines so they'll be running RedHat and Solaris. Doesn't the x4100 have h/w RAID built in? Or does that not work with FreeBSD? Scott -- =========================================================================== Scott Mitchell | PGP Key ID | "Eagles may soar, but weasels Cambridge, England | 0x54B171B9 | don't get sucked into jet engines" scott at fishballoon.org | 0xAA775B8B | -- Anon
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