Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2005 17:29:23 +0100 From: Joao Barros <joao.barros@gmail.com> To: Scott Long <scottl@samsco.org> Cc: Massimo <massimo@cedoc.mo.it>, freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: raid framework from OpenBSD Message-ID: <70e8236f050916092979979613@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <4327DC81.7040903@samsco.org> References: <1126683752.4306.6.camel@massimo.datacode.it> <4327DC81.7040903@samsco.org>
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On 9/14/05, Scott Long <scottl@samsco.org> wrote: > Massimo wrote: > > I would like to know what do you think about new OpenBSD raid framework > > management. > > http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=3Dopenbsd-misc&m=3D112630095818062 > > > > Doesn't it seems good stuff which is good for consideration? > > > > Regards. >=20 > Creating a unified management tool for multiple RAID architectures has > been a Holy Grail for at least 10 years, if not longer. It's > deceptively hard, though. While it sounds straight-forward and is > relatively easy to do for 1 or 2 architectures, the vast differences in > how different architectures work makes it quickly turn into a huge mess. > This is especially true when it comes to topology discovery and > management and asynchronous event notification. Often times the only > course is to degrade to a very simple, lowest common denominator > interface, which then starts to limit the usefulness of the tool. I've > been involved in several professional projects in exactly this area, and > it simply is very, very hard to do well. The OpenBSD work looks > interesting, but unless they can demostrate useful operation on more > than 1 or 2 architectures, it's not terribly impressive. That's not to > say that it can't be done and be a success, but the amount of required > effort should not be underestimated. It's relatively easy to come up > with a framework and implement one architecture module in it, then tell > everyone else to simply add more modules. >=20 > Also, it's not clear from the email whether the tool has to be manually > told to rescan and look for changes in the state of the array (not just > SES/SAFTE changes of the component drives). Displaying status on demand > is fine, but what admin sits in front of their terminal and refreshes > their monitoring apps every 5 seconds? The key is to have a an event > notification pipeline that can collect events in near real time, filter > them in a configurable way, and send out email/pager alerts when > appropriate. Also, what does this mean for a datacenter full of > machines that need to be monitored? Does a remote terminal session need > to be opened on each one in order for monitoring to work? >=20 > But, even if this particular work degrades into only being a tool for > AMI (I assume they mean MegaRAID) controllers, it's still useful and I > give them credit for doing it. Having an amr I'm most interested in this, as I guess more people are. Given that there is "customer" interest, my question is: is there interest from you in this, having it imported to FreeBSD? I've looked at the code and I wouldn't mind starting to work on this. -- Joao Barros
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