Are there problems using hardware RAID with Redhat Fedora Core 4?

hewitt_tech hewitt_tech at comcast.net
Fri Jan 20 12:07:01 EST 2006


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ben Scott" <dragonhawk at gmail.com>
To: "GNHLUG" <gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org>
Sent: Friday, January 20, 2006 11:47 AM
Subject: Re: Are there problems using hardware RAID with Redhat Fedora Core 
4?


> On 1/19/06, hewitt_tech <hewitt_tech at comcast.net> wrote:
>> I'm installing Fedora Core 4 on a Dell SC1420 server that contains a
>> hardware SATA RAID controller and 3 80 GB drives. So far it appears that 
>> the
>> hardware RAID (Dell Cerc /Adaptec) makes the 3 drives transparent to the 
>> OS.
>> That is Linux just saw an ~148 GB drive and installed on it without
>> complaints.
>
>  Yes.  That's generally the way I prefer to do RAID.  (Actually,
> SCSI-to-SCSI RAID is even better, but one thing at a time.)  Things
> just get so much cleaner when everything sees the same presentation of
> the physical storage.  Of course, driver support can be an issue, but
> as long as you stick to a well-supported controller, that's usually
> not an issue.
>
>> I can see that Fedora doesn't seem to have any way to talk to
>> the controller to determine if there are any drive faults but that can be
>> controlled from the BIOS.
>
>  Generally speaking, this is up to the driver, and possibly some
> supplemental utilities.  For example, with MegaRAID (which includes
> many Dell PERC products), the driver will generate kernel log messages
> about drives failing, rebuilding, etc.  The OEM (now LSI Logic,
> formerly AMI) also provides a "megamgr" binary which duplicated the
> BIOS utility functionality almost exactly.
>
>  Dell generally provides some level of support for Linux on their
> servers.  That includes their OpenManage suite of management tools.
> I'd suggest trying the Dell support website.  It's fairly good, IME.
>

Dell included some CDs with the new system but not the OpenManage Server 
Administrator disk which is supposed to provide the RAID management 
utilities. I've been poking around the Dell web site looking for the 
required software but so far no luck.

>  Also, you may want to subscribe to the poweredge-linux mailing list
> (also hosted by Dell).  There's a lot of good info and people on that
> list.
>

Thanks Ben, I'll sign up and see if there might be some suggestions about 
how to manage the RAID array from the OS level. Dell's web site addresses 
itself to Red Hat Enterprise and SuSe Enterprise distributions but so far 
FC4 seems to be working correctly. I just now upgraded the kernel to 
2.6.14-1.1656_FCsmp and the system is still stable so I'm beginning to think 
the RAID controller driver aacraid, works properly. The next step will be to 
run an exercisor to make sure the system will bear up under an I/O load and 
if that works well than I'll have more confidence in it.

-Alex

> -- Ben
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