Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] 3ware SATA Raid
On Friday 10 February 2006 20:34, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote: They have supported drivers (GPL'd, IIRC) that go back to 2.3.x kernels. 2.6.16 might include them in mainline, mm-sources has included them since 2.6.14, at least. I think RHEL4 will include the drivers in their kernel. They also provide 32- and 64-bit command line utilities [cut] Well, thanks for the valuable info. I should really rethink about my choice and reconsider areca. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] 3ware SATA Raid
On Friday 10 February 2006 22:04, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Most hot swap stuff has the drives in caddys that fit in a mount. The mount contains power connections and drive connections. the caddy has cables for the disk data and power that go to a connector on the caddy. The caddy slides into the mount and the connections are made. Some caddies have a lock on the front that cuts off power when unlocked for removal. Ok, thanks to everybody for your helpful replies. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
[gentoo-user] [OT] 3ware SATA Raid
So, I'm finally going to buy a 3ware 9550sx SATA Raid board. From what I've read, it is well supported by linux and it should do true hardware raid (ie, the OS sees only one drive). Anyway, I found little documentation about the so-called hot-swap feature. As I understand it, that means one should be able to remove a faulty disk from the array, and subsequently insert a new disk, all without powering off the machine, and with the OS being unaware of what's going on. Is my understanding correct or am I too optimistic? More generally, what are your opinions/experiences with 3ware boards? Thanks -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] 3ware SATA Raid
On Friday 10 February 2006 10:14, Etaoin Shrdlu wrote: So, I'm finally going to buy a 3ware 9550sx SATA Raid board. From what I've read, it is well supported by linux and it should do true hardware raid (ie, the OS sees only one drive). Anyway, I found little documentation about the so-called hot-swap feature. As I understand it, that means one should be able to remove a faulty disk from the array, and subsequently insert a new disk, all without powering off the machine, and with the OS being unaware of what's going on. Is my understanding correct or am I too optimistic? More generally, what are your opinions/experiences with 3ware boards? Thanks You are correct, you are able to hot-swap the drives without rebooting or anything. I have a 3ware 7506-12 card and I'm able to hot-swap drives aswell, the drivers work very good and the management tool allows you to create/modify/rebuild raid arrays without rebooting. My opinion, 3ware is a great brand with great cards and I'd definately recommend them. But.. Areca cards are a lot faster for the serial ata stuff, altough I'm not sure about there linux driver support, it's worth to take a look at there stuff :) -- Rick van Hattem Rick.van.Hattem(at)Fawo.nl pgpTtA5qXqiAY.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] 3ware SATA Raid
First of all, thanks for your answer. On Friday 10 February 2006 19:39, Rick van Hattem wrote: You are correct, you are able to hot-swap the drives without rebooting or anything. I have a 3ware 7506-12 card and I'm able to hot-swap drives aswell, the drivers work very good and the management tool allows you to create/modify/rebuild raid arrays without rebooting. But how do you actually hot-swap the drives? Does the disk that is going to be removed have to be somehow powered off (eg, via some switch in the backplane or in the enclosure) before? (Sorry for the dumb questions, I read a reasonable amount of documents about RAID but actually I never had to deal with it in the real life - until now of course). Is the management tool opensource or is it a binary proprietary program? But.. Areca cards are a lot faster for the serial ata stuff, altough I'm not sure about there linux driver support, it's worth to take a look at there stuff :) Well, areca is in fact the other brand I was interested in (together with LSI)...I'm not sure, but they seem to use marvell chipset; there is support for it in the kernel, although the driver is still experimental (but they mantain a separate opensource driver). Don't know about their management tools (infos are welcome). -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] 3ware SATA Raid
On Friday 10 February 2006 12:39, Rick van Hattem [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote about 'Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] 3ware SATA Raid': On Friday 10 February 2006 10:14, Etaoin Shrdlu wrote: So, I'm finally going to buy a 3ware 9550sx SATA Raid board. From what I've read, it is well supported by linux and it should do true hardware raid (ie, the OS sees only one drive). Anyway, I found little documentation about the so-called hot-swap feature. As I understand it, that means one should be able to remove a faulty disk from the array, and subsequently insert a new disk, all without powering off the machine, and with the OS being unaware of what's going on. Is my understanding correct or am I too optimistic? You are correct, you are able to hot-swap the drives without rebooting or anything. But.. Areca cards are a lot faster for the serial ata stuff, altough I'm not sure about there linux driver support, it's worth to take a look at there stuff :) They have supported drivers (GPL'd, IIRC) that go back to 2.3.x kernels. 2.6.16 might include them in mainline, mm-sources has included them since 2.6.14, at least. I think RHEL4 will include the drivers in their kernel. They also provide 32- and 64-bit command line utilities that can do all the controller operations from within linux, as well as both 32- and 64-bit http servers that will run on the machine with the controller and provide a remote (or local) management console that provides all the controller operations. If you want to integrate the controller management into a larger tool, or write a gtk/qt frontend, they publish the public API provided by their closed source, but freely available arecalib. Areca cards do handle the hot-swap feature mentioned by the OP. Unfortunately (and from what I've read this is a limitation of linux...), newly created arrays or pass-though drives do not immediately appear in /dev nor do removed arrays or pass-through drives disappear. That said, the scenario given by the OP (replacing a faulty disk live) does not add or remove device node in /dev so it will work perfectly. I love my Areca 1160. There's only one feature I wish it handled that it doesn't: the non-standard RAID 1n, which is RAID 1 (mirroring) with more than 2 drives in the array -- something that should've been trivial for them to implement. So, instead I use RAID 6, which is fairly nice. -- Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. [EMAIL PROTECTED] ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] 3ware SATA Raid
Etaoin Shrdlu wrote: But how do you actually hot-swap the drives? Does the disk that is going to be removed have to be somehow powered off (eg, via some switch in the backplane or in the enclosure) before? I think hot-swap is supported by sata itself (I mean hardware side), similar as for usb: grounding pins are longer, i.e. you can just simply pull out power-cable and then data-cable even while your server is on. Or you can buy special swappable enclosures for sata-disk, which is mounted in free external 5 1/4 position (e.g. from ViPowER SwapRack) and easily pull out sata disk from your server... Jarry -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] 3ware SATA Raid
Most hot swap stuff has the drives in caddys that fit in a mount. The mount contains power connections and drive connections. the caddy has cables for the disk data and power that go to a connector on the caddy. The caddy slides into the mount and the connections are made. Some caddies have a lock on the front that cuts off power when unlocked for removal. From: Etaoin Shrdlu [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2006/02/10 Fri PM 02:50:24 EST To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] 3ware SATA Raid First of all, thanks for your answer. On Friday 10 February 2006 19:39, Rick van Hattem wrote: You are correct, you are able to hot-swap the drives without rebooting or anything. I have a 3ware 7506-12 card and I'm able to hot-swap drives aswell, the drivers work very good and the management tool allows you to create/modify/rebuild raid arrays without rebooting. But how do you actually hot-swap the drives? Does the disk that is going to be removed have to be somehow powered off (eg, via some switch in the backplane or in the enclosure) before? (Sorry for the dumb questions, I read a reasonable amount of documents about RAID but actually I never had to deal with it in the real life - until now of course). Is the management tool opensource or is it a binary proprietary program? But.. Areca cards are a lot faster for the serial ata stuff, altough I'm not sure about there linux driver support, it's worth to take a look at there stuff :) Well, areca is in fact the other brand I was interested in (together with LSI)...I'm not sure, but they seem to use marvell chipset; there is support for it in the kernel, although the driver is still experimental (but they mantain a separate opensource driver). Don't know about their management tools (infos are welcome). -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
