Re: Xen, grub and suggestions for a hardware RAID?

[Johan Ihren <johani%johani.org@localhost>]

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On 6 Feb 2007, at 11:33, Konrad Neuwirth wrote:

> Johan,
>
> > The system has 4 x SATA disks and I'm looking at either
> >
> > * Adaptec 2410SA (supported by aac(4))
>
> We have that one running in a number of machines, from a box still  
> running
> NetBSD 2.0.2 to a few boxen on 3.1, including two machines running
> Xen. They Just Work, have a decent Bios to configure most things  
> from and
> we haven't had any serious problems in changing disks with them.   
> They can
> even reconstruct their RAID set whilst you're already running the  
> system --
> this just leads to a disk performance decrease, but not machine  
> downtime.
>
> I don't have first hand experience with the 3ware SATA cards, but  
> I'd just
> by the Adaptecs again because we haven't been burned by them.

As someone else wrote the 3ware 9000-series seems to be on its way  
out and I couldn't get my hands on one. So I got the Adaptec 2410SA.

However, although the RAID as such works just fine I am unable to get  
it to do any type of reporting whatsoever to NetBSD. I.e. I'm aware  
that I need to do RAID management from the BIOS rather than a NetBSD  
userland tool and that's ok.

But I need to be notified if a disk fails, etc. This box will sit in  
a remote facility and w/o status notifications there is zero  
opportunity for me to know if there are issues with the RAID. Am I  
missing something obvious here? E.g., do you get any notification in  
NetBSD if you pull a disk from the RAID?

On Tue, 6 Feb 2007, Manuel Bouyer wrote:

> > > * 3ware Escalade 9500S-4LP (supported by twa(4) or twe(4), although
> > > looking again that seems less than clear)
> >
> > I have 2 9500S-8LP in a server here, it's fast (supported by
> > twa) and I didn't have any issues with theses so far.

Stephen Borrill wrote:

> I've been using 8506S and 9500S for a while with no problems, plus  
> you can use the FreeBSD tw_cli command line utility to manage them.  
> The UK 3ware disti is telling us that 9500 series cards are on  
> their way out and they don't hold stock. They were pushing the 9550  
> instead (and a PCI-Express version which didn't look to be  
> supported ATM) which is less flexible about what PCI slots it will  
> fit in. Both 9500 and 9550 are supported bye twa).

Aha. So you're using the tw_cli utility from inside NetBSD, under  
emulation? If that works, great... much more convenient than having  
to exit to BIOS. Like having most of the benefits of RAIDframe in  
combination with the benefits of a h/w RAID. I'll probably try a  
9550SX next time.

Regards,

Johan

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