Re: NCR 3550 Digital Library Was Re: System Pro WAS RE: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
I (via Purdue surplus) had some NCR Worldmark 5500's (5 refrigerator sized cabinets each with two MCA bus mulit-processor Pentium Pro systems, and a total of 4TB of storage, back when that was about 1000 disks). I still have the mutli-cpu Pentium box that was the management system for that, but it hasn't been powered up in a long time. On Tue, Jul 21, 2020 at 1:01 PM Chris Zach via cctalk wrote: > That was it: MP-RAS. It was neat, kind of good, but to be honest Windows > NT 3.51 and 4.0 ran very well on it. > > Just weighed a literal ton. For all I know it's still in the basement of > their Dupont Center office (now long closed) > > C > > On 7/21/2020 11:50 AM, Kevin Bowling wrote: > > Wow, would love to have a machine like that. The “weird unix” was > > probably MP-RAS which was NCR’s SysVr4. NCR was selling massive x86 MCA > > systems for Terradata setups in the early ‘90s. > > > > On Thu, Jul 16, 2020 at 8:54 AM Chris Zach via cctalk > > mailto:cctalk@classiccmp.org>> wrote: > > > > Now in terms of the most MANLY system I worked on, that would be the > > NCR3550 we had at the IEEE Computer Society. When I arrived in 1993 > it > > had been donated, but was doing nothing with 4 486 CPUs in it and a > > weird copy of AT unix. I took one look at the 256 bit interleaved > > memory architecture the 3 levels of cache with affinity, the infinite > > amount of space for disks, and the dual micro-channel busses and > > fell in > > *love* > > > > We talked to NCR, upgraded it to 512mb memory, 8 Pentium Pro/200 > CPUs, > > and dual Microchannel busses with FDDI and Ethernet interfaces. > Loaded > > it with disks, installed Windows NT 4.0 on it, and turned it into > > TALOS, > > the main server for the IEEE Computer Society's Digital Library > > (which I > > built). > > > > Partnered with Anderson and Netscape to multi-thread commerce server > > (SSL), built an E-account system in Lotus Domino/Notes, and loaded up > > all of our SGML with an SGML to HTML converter (Dynaweb) and a custom > > tool that could convert Tek math to GIFs on the fly. That process > could > > take advantage of all 8 CPUs and render complex math articles in > > real time. > > > > Also did e-commerce for awhile with online credit card processing for > > memberships and conferences (SuperComputing/95 was the first > conference > > to do on-line credit cards, I built that too because I was sick and > > tired of keying in the cards myself. Laziness is next to godliness) > > > > It served for years as the CS Digital Library core server with > > 30,000-40,000 accounts in active use. Man that thing was a truck, I > > wish > > I knew what had happened to it. > > > > And to think, it all started with the computer room ceiling > collapsing > > from all the RS232 cables from the Vax and crushing our Sun Sparc 20 > > web > > server that kicked off this whole thing. > > > > I should write a book or an article about that. We did so much that > was > > so... new... and all of that could be forgotten like tears in the > > rain > > > > CZ > > > > On 7/16/2020 11:40 AM, Ali via cctalk wrote: > > >>> Had a full compliment of memory, > > >>> max internal disk on the ATA controller, > > >> > > >> ATA? That long ago? > > >> > > >> Possible but unusual in a server, I would have thought. > > > > > > Funny story about that - I just setup a Systempro XL at home to > > play with. It is fully decked out w/ dual processor 50MHZ 486s (not > > DX2), 512MB of memory, a 4GB SCSI Boot Drive and six 2GB SCSI drives > > in RAID 5. The Compaq systems came standard with what Compaq called > > the IDA (Intelligent Drive Array). It was IDE based but did not use > > standard IDE drives. I think it could do RAID 0, 1, and 3 (or the > > equivalents there of). Compaq even had a few iterations of the > > controller and cached ones. Interestingly the Systempro XL had a > > SCSI 2 controller on the MB mainly used for the tape dive or CD > > while the base config came with an IDA 2 controller and could have > > up to eight drives. In addition you could install extra IDA > > controllers for even more drives or to drive external boxes. Or you > > could upgrade to a SCSI array - which is what I have running in my > > Systempro XL. > > > > > > > > >> > > >> What OS, just out of interest? > > > > > > Target OS was WinNT 3.1 initially and then 4.0. 2K was also > > supported but the machine really was not meant for 2k. You could > > also run OS/2, Novell Netware, Compaq DOS, and supposedly there was > > even a version of MS LanMan (the full server OS not the client) for > > the Systempro that allowed SMP. > > > > > > -Ali > > > > > > >
Re: NCR 3550 Digital Library Was Re: System Pro WAS RE: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
That was it: MP-RAS. It was neat, kind of good, but to be honest Windows NT 3.51 and 4.0 ran very well on it. Just weighed a literal ton. For all I know it's still in the basement of their Dupont Center office (now long closed) C On 7/21/2020 11:50 AM, Kevin Bowling wrote: Wow, would love to have a machine like that. The “weird unix” was probably MP-RAS which was NCR’s SysVr4. NCR was selling massive x86 MCA systems for Terradata setups in the early ‘90s. On Thu, Jul 16, 2020 at 8:54 AM Chris Zach via cctalk mailto:cctalk@classiccmp.org>> wrote: Now in terms of the most MANLY system I worked on, that would be the NCR3550 we had at the IEEE Computer Society. When I arrived in 1993 it had been donated, but was doing nothing with 4 486 CPUs in it and a weird copy of AT unix. I took one look at the 256 bit interleaved memory architecture the 3 levels of cache with affinity, the infinite amount of space for disks, and the dual micro-channel busses and fell in *love* We talked to NCR, upgraded it to 512mb memory, 8 Pentium Pro/200 CPUs, and dual Microchannel busses with FDDI and Ethernet interfaces. Loaded it with disks, installed Windows NT 4.0 on it, and turned it into TALOS, the main server for the IEEE Computer Society's Digital Library (which I built). Partnered with Anderson and Netscape to multi-thread commerce server (SSL), built an E-account system in Lotus Domino/Notes, and loaded up all of our SGML with an SGML to HTML converter (Dynaweb) and a custom tool that could convert Tek math to GIFs on the fly. That process could take advantage of all 8 CPUs and render complex math articles in real time. Also did e-commerce for awhile with online credit card processing for memberships and conferences (SuperComputing/95 was the first conference to do on-line credit cards, I built that too because I was sick and tired of keying in the cards myself. Laziness is next to godliness) It served for years as the CS Digital Library core server with 30,000-40,000 accounts in active use. Man that thing was a truck, I wish I knew what had happened to it. And to think, it all started with the computer room ceiling collapsing from all the RS232 cables from the Vax and crushing our Sun Sparc 20 web server that kicked off this whole thing. I should write a book or an article about that. We did so much that was so... new... and all of that could be forgotten like tears in the rain CZ On 7/16/2020 11:40 AM, Ali via cctalk wrote: >>> Had a full compliment of memory, >>> max internal disk on the ATA controller, >> >> ATA? That long ago? >> >> Possible but unusual in a server, I would have thought. > > Funny story about that - I just setup a Systempro XL at home to play with. It is fully decked out w/ dual processor 50MHZ 486s (not DX2), 512MB of memory, a 4GB SCSI Boot Drive and six 2GB SCSI drives in RAID 5. The Compaq systems came standard with what Compaq called the IDA (Intelligent Drive Array). It was IDE based but did not use standard IDE drives. I think it could do RAID 0, 1, and 3 (or the equivalents there of). Compaq even had a few iterations of the controller and cached ones. Interestingly the Systempro XL had a SCSI 2 controller on the MB mainly used for the tape dive or CD while the base config came with an IDA 2 controller and could have up to eight drives. In addition you could install extra IDA controllers for even more drives or to drive external boxes. Or you could upgrade to a SCSI array - which is what I have running in my Systempro XL. > > >> >> What OS, just out of interest? > > Target OS was WinNT 3.1 initially and then 4.0. 2K was also supported but the machine really was not meant for 2k. You could also run OS/2, Novell Netware, Compaq DOS, and supposedly there was even a version of MS LanMan (the full server OS not the client) for the Systempro that allowed SMP. > > -Ali >
Re: NCR 3550 Digital Library Was Re: System Pro WAS RE: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
Wow, would love to have a machine like that. The “weird unix” was probably MP-RAS which was NCR’s SysVr4. NCR was selling massive x86 MCA systems for Terradata setups in the early ‘90s. On Thu, Jul 16, 2020 at 8:54 AM Chris Zach via cctalk wrote: > Now in terms of the most MANLY system I worked on, that would be the > NCR3550 we had at the IEEE Computer Society. When I arrived in 1993 it > had been donated, but was doing nothing with 4 486 CPUs in it and a > weird copy of AT unix. I took one look at the 256 bit interleaved > memory architecture the 3 levels of cache with affinity, the infinite > amount of space for disks, and the dual micro-channel busses and fell in > *love* > > We talked to NCR, upgraded it to 512mb memory, 8 Pentium Pro/200 CPUs, > and dual Microchannel busses with FDDI and Ethernet interfaces. Loaded > it with disks, installed Windows NT 4.0 on it, and turned it into TALOS, > the main server for the IEEE Computer Society's Digital Library (which I > built). > > Partnered with Anderson and Netscape to multi-thread commerce server > (SSL), built an E-account system in Lotus Domino/Notes, and loaded up > all of our SGML with an SGML to HTML converter (Dynaweb) and a custom > tool that could convert Tek math to GIFs on the fly. That process could > take advantage of all 8 CPUs and render complex math articles in real time. > > Also did e-commerce for awhile with online credit card processing for > memberships and conferences (SuperComputing/95 was the first conference > to do on-line credit cards, I built that too because I was sick and > tired of keying in the cards myself. Laziness is next to godliness) > > It served for years as the CS Digital Library core server with > 30,000-40,000 accounts in active use. Man that thing was a truck, I wish > I knew what had happened to it. > > And to think, it all started with the computer room ceiling collapsing > from all the RS232 cables from the Vax and crushing our Sun Sparc 20 web > server that kicked off this whole thing. > > I should write a book or an article about that. We did so much that was > so... new... and all of that could be forgotten like tears in the rain > > CZ > > On 7/16/2020 11:40 AM, Ali via cctalk wrote: > >>> Had a full compliment of memory, > >>> max internal disk on the ATA controller, > >> > >> ATA? That long ago? > >> > >> Possible but unusual in a server, I would have thought. > > > > Funny story about that - I just setup a Systempro XL at home to play > with. It is fully decked out w/ dual processor 50MHZ 486s (not DX2), 512MB > of memory, a 4GB SCSI Boot Drive and six 2GB SCSI drives in RAID 5. The > Compaq systems came standard with what Compaq called the IDA (Intelligent > Drive Array). It was IDE based but did not use standard IDE drives. I think > it could do RAID 0, 1, and 3 (or the equivalents there of). Compaq even had > a few iterations of the controller and cached ones. Interestingly the > Systempro XL had a SCSI 2 controller on the MB mainly used for the tape > dive or CD while the base config came with an IDA 2 controller and could > have up to eight drives. In addition you could install extra IDA > controllers for even more drives or to drive external boxes. Or you could > upgrade to a SCSI array - which is what I have running in my Systempro XL. > > > > > >> > >> What OS, just out of interest? > > > > Target OS was WinNT 3.1 initially and then 4.0. 2K was also supported > but the machine really was not meant for 2k. You could also run OS/2, > Novell Netware, Compaq DOS, and supposedly there was even a version of MS > LanMan (the full server OS not the client) for the Systempro that allowed > SMP. > > > > -Ali > > >
Re: System Pro WAS RE: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
On Fri, Jul 17, 2020 at 2:38 PM Grant Taylor via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > On 7/16/20 12:07 PM, Ali wrote: > > MS LanMan was Microsoft's networking OS of choice before NT. The base > > OS I believe was based on MS OS/2 1.31. > > I'm trying to discern if it was it's own independent OS, or if it was > more a package of a COTS OS (OS/2) and LAN Man package, like Back Office > / Small Business Server are Windows Server OS and packages. > I believe that "OS/2 LAN Server" was part of "OS/2 1.3 Extended Edition". Extended Edition also included some kind of SNA gateway, iirc, and probably other things I have zero recollection of. The product had a notion of "domains" at this point, although I don't know if this was a new feature introduced with the OS/2 version or if previous products already had it. -ken
Re: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
On 7/17/20 7:07 PM, Paul Koning wrote: Yes, if you define it that way then clearly I agree. The thing is that in most people's definition, "drive failure" means "the drive is a door stop". Ya I've had too many "but the drive isn't a brick ... how could it be the failure" experiences to use that as my benchmark. Now, if the drive is not doing what it's supposed to do in any (reproducible) manner, I consider it a failure. Well ... almost any reproducible manner. And in fact, hard read errors are normal. Every drive has a spec for the probability of that happening, and given the per-sector failure probability and the sector count, the probability of SOME sector failing to read when you read the whole drive is nowadays somewhere around 1. Ya. That's where the reproducibility of any given failure comes into play. -- Grant. . . . unix || die
Re: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
On 7/17/2020 6:58 PM, Grant Taylor via cctalk wrote: If I'm going to be dealing with that type of oddness, I'd rather do it on my preferred OS of choice than something embedded that I don't have much experience with. On the other hand I never lost any data on my IBM DS4300 or 4700 SANs. The tech support was excellent and we beat the hell out of those things. Then again I never had a problem at all with Compaq SMART arrays. The key was to have the SMART software installed and running.
Re: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
On 7/17/20 4:33 PM, Chris Zach via cctalk wrote: Oh yeah. I remember having a DS4300 that had a failed drive and when we tried to rebuild it corrupted the whole string. Call to IBM ensued where they had us disable one controller, then the other controller was able to rebuild the array, then we brought the first controller back in sync. Tricky Yep. If I'm going to be dealing with that type of oddness, I'd rather do it on my preferred OS of choice than something embedded that I don't have much experience with. -- Grant. . . . unix || die
Re: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
Oh yeah. I remember having a DS4300 that had a failed drive and when we tried to rebuild it corrupted the whole string. Call to IBM ensued where they had us disable one controller, then the other controller was able to rebuild the array, then we brought the first controller back in sync. Tricky C On 7/17/2020 5:04 PM, Grant Taylor via cctalk wrote: On 7/17/20 2:42 PM, Paul Berger via cctalk wrote: I had a disk that went over a SMART threshold that was part of a mdadm software mirror and it posted a message every time I rebooted warning of impending doom. That sounds like the typical S.M.A.R.T. alert from the BIOS. Not something from the kernel. If it was the kernel, I'd like to know more about it. The systems I support professionally do try to warn the admins, but it seems that frequently no notice is taken until the level of redundancy is exceeded at which time the issue becomes more difficult to ignore, and then begins the waling and gnashing of teeth.. Yep. I suspect many, if not most, of us have been in that teeth gnashing situation.
Re: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
On 7/17/20 2:39 PM, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: "too many drives failed at the same time" IMHO, this encompases hard read errors. For what ever reason, the drive was not able to priovide the data within a reasonable time period. Be it physical drive failure, hard read error rate, or someone disconnecting the drive. -- Grant. . . . unix || die
Re: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
On 7/17/20 2:42 PM, Paul Berger via cctalk wrote: I had a disk that went over a SMART threshold that was part of a mdadm software mirror and it posted a message every time I rebooted warning of impending doom. That sounds like the typical S.M.A.R.T. alert from the BIOS. Not something from the kernel. If it was the kernel, I'd like to know more about it. The systems I support professionally do try to warn the admins, but it seems that frequently no notice is taken until the level of redundancy is exceeded at which time the issue becomes more difficult to ignore, and then begins the waling and gnashing of teeth.. Yep. I suspect many, if not most, of us have been in that teeth gnashing situation. -- Grant. . . . unix || die
Re: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
On 2020-07-17 5:36 p.m., Grant Taylor via cctalk wrote: On 7/17/20 2:30 PM, ben via cctalk wrote: Does modern software even let you know if a drive is failing? I'm not aware of any software RAID solution jumping up and proactively notifying you that there's a problem /by/ /default/. But I think the same thing is largely true about hardware RAID solutions. The only caveat being an alarm that might sound on a hardware RAID solution. But that assumes that someone is in proximity to hear it. All hardware and software RAID solutions that I've worked with do expose the information. They all also have software that can be used to check and then take some action to notify people. I had a disk that went over a SMART threshold that was part of a mdadm software mirror and it posted a message every time I rebooted warning of impending doom. The systems I support professionally do try to warn the admins, but it seems that frequently no notice is taken until the level of redundancy is exceeded at which time the issue becomes more difficult to ignore, and then begins the waling and gnashing of teeth.. Paul.
Re: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
> On Jul 17, 2020, at 4:19 PM, Grant Taylor via cctalk > wrote: > > On 7/17/20 12:58 PM, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: >> What is "three drive parity"? > > A poor choice of words in a complex topic. > > How about "three drives worth of redundancy" Meaning that your data will > still be accessible if three drives fail. > > ZFS has three versions of ZRAID or RAID-Z. > > - RAID-Z1 is analogous to RAID-5. > - RAID-Z2 is analogous to RAID-6. > - RAID-Z3 is analogous to ??? > > I'm not aware of any official definition of a mirror of more than two drives. > I've heard of "3-way" / "4-way" / "n-way" mirrors. > > I think that the industry has settled on RAID-10 / RAID-01 and possibly > RAID-11 / maybe even RAID-00. But that isn't a standard to me. > > Further, I see disagreements of what is the strip and what is the mirror in > RAID-10 / RAID-01. > >> "Parity" is the description of RAID-5, and 3 drive RAID-5 is certainly >> perfectly standard. RAID-1 is not parity, it's mirroring. > > If you think of it as "redundant drives" or "number of drives that can fail > without destroying data", then yes, RAID-1 does have a numerical value quite > similar to RAID-3 / RAID-5 / RAID-6 / RAID-Z* / etc.. Though nomenclature > becomes highly problematic. Yes. Marketeers like to use the phrase "erasure coding" as a magic token to indicate great wonderfulness beyond RAID. Actually, it's a math term that describes the standard RAID systems plus generalizations. I don't know if there is a clear terminology for the general thing. I tend to call them "k of n" codes, k data bits, n message bits. Or in the RAID case, k drives worth of data, n total drives. That makes RAID-1 a 1 of 2 erasure code, the thing we started talking about 1 of 3 erasure code, RAID-5 is n of n+1 erasure code, and RAID-6 is n of n+2 erasure code. So in the k of n notation, n-k drives can fail before you lose your data. Actually, more realistic with today's drive sizes: n-k-1 drives can fail and one drive can have a hard read error during reconstruction before you lose data. For sufficiently large drives, the probability of a hard read error somewhere is nearly 1, which is why RAID-5 is only a good idea for small disk drives. People have build storage systems with other erasure codes, for example n of n+3. Not because it's really necessary but as a research experiment; the "Self-star" system at CMU comes to mind. >> Is the question about triple mirroring, i.e., 3 drives all having the same >> data on them? > > I was stating that I'm not aware of an official RAID level designation for > ZFS's RAID-Z3. > >> That's pretty rare though not unheard of, I've never seen a RAID-x >> designation for that. > > I've known more than a few people to use n-way mirrors (~RAID-1). Though I > think I've only seen it in software. > >> For high availability, RAID-6 is much more economical (and at this point the >> standard choice); triple mirroring is of that class, with the difference >> that it performs better for random short writes. > > Are you comparing RAID-6 to triple (3-way) mirroring? Or something else? > > I think that things get really weird and deep in minutia when you start > comparing a 3-way mirror to a 3 drive RAID-6. Same number of drives (3), and > same capacity (1 drive worth), and same fault tolerance (2 drive failures). Yes. The difference is that the 3 drives in a 3-drive RAID-6 system aren't copies, so the write and reconstruction logic is more complex. But actually I meant RAID-6 generally. As I mentioned above, in RAID-5 if you lose a drive, you have no redundancy, which means that if you encounter a hard read error during reconstruction you've lost that stripe. And for today's large drive chances are that will happen. With RAID-6, if one drive fails you can still recover from hard read errors. If you run the statistical analysis with typical drive MTBF and hard read error rates, you'll find that the read error during reconstruction is the major contributor to data loss, not the "too many drives failed at the same time" scenario. At least not if the drive chassis is built correctly and the power source and other environmental parameters are reasonably clean. paul
Re: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
On 7/17/20 2:30 PM, ben via cctalk wrote: Does modern software even let you know if a drive is failing? I'm not aware of any software RAID solution jumping up and proactively notifying you that there's a problem /by/ /default/. But I think the same thing is largely true about hardware RAID solutions. The only caveat being an alarm that might sound on a hardware RAID solution. But that assumes that someone is in proximity to hear it. All hardware and software RAID solutions that I've worked with do expose the information. They all also have software that can be used to check and then take some action to notify people. -- Grant. . . . unix || die
Re: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
On 7/17/2020 2:19 PM, Grant Taylor via cctalk wrote: On 7/17/20 12:58 PM, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: What is "three drive parity"? A poor choice of words in a complex topic. How about "three drives worth of redundancy" Meaning that your data will still be accessible if three drives fail. Does modern software even let you know if a drive is failing? Ben.
Re: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
On 7/17/20 12:58 PM, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: What is "three drive parity"? A poor choice of words in a complex topic. How about "three drives worth of redundancy" Meaning that your data will still be accessible if three drives fail. ZFS has three versions of ZRAID or RAID-Z. - RAID-Z1 is analogous to RAID-5. - RAID-Z2 is analogous to RAID-6. - RAID-Z3 is analogous to ??? I'm not aware of any official definition of a mirror of more than two drives. I've heard of "3-way" / "4-way" / "n-way" mirrors. I think that the industry has settled on RAID-10 / RAID-01 and possibly RAID-11 / maybe even RAID-00. But that isn't a standard to me. Further, I see disagreements of what is the strip and what is the mirror in RAID-10 / RAID-01. "Parity" is the description of RAID-5, and 3 drive RAID-5 is certainly perfectly standard. RAID-1 is not parity, it's mirroring. If you think of it as "redundant drives" or "number of drives that can fail without destroying data", then yes, RAID-1 does have a numerical value quite similar to RAID-3 / RAID-5 / RAID-6 / RAID-Z* / etc.. Though nomenclature becomes highly problematic. Is the question about triple mirroring, i.e., 3 drives all having the same data on them? I was stating that I'm not aware of an official RAID level designation for ZFS's RAID-Z3. That's pretty rare though not unheard of, I've never seen a RAID-x designation for that. I've known more than a few people to use n-way mirrors (~RAID-1). Though I think I've only seen it in software. For high availability, RAID-6 is much more economical (and at this point the standard choice); triple mirroring is of that class, with the difference that it performs better for random short writes. Are you comparing RAID-6 to triple (3-way) mirroring? Or something else? I think that things get really weird and deep in minutia when you start comparing a 3-way mirror to a 3 drive RAID-6. Same number of drives (3), and same capacity (1 drive worth), and same fault tolerance (2 drive failures). One of the other things that I've thus far neglected to mention about ZFS is it's abilities to take snapshots and then subsequently send & receive said snapshots* between pools / tape / image files. These are some things that I think are nigh impossible to do with typical traditional hardware RAID controllers. Sure, you might be able to do it with systems that fall into the broad category of a higher end RAID controller, but that is more typically a SAN controller which is effectively it's own microcosm. * You can also send / receive unmounted file systems** in addition to snapshots of file systems. ** You can do similar with a zDevice, which is a logical block device created by the ZFS pool. -- Grant. . . . unix || die
Re: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
> On Jul 17, 2020, at 2:54 PM, Grant Taylor via cctalk > wrote: > > .. >> Interesting. Is there an official RAID level for three drive parity? > > I'm not aware of one. But my ignorance thereof does not preclude it from > existing. What is "three drive parity"? "Parity" is the description of RAID-5, and 3 drive RAID-5 is certainly perfectly standard. RAID-1 is not parity, it's mirroring. Is the question about triple mirroring, i.e., 3 drives all having the same data on them? That's pretty rare though not unheard of, I've never seen a RAID-x designation for that. For high availability, RAID-6 is much more economical (and at this point the standard choice); triple mirroring is of that class, with the difference that it performs better for random short writes. paul
Re: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
On 7/16/20 11:58 AM, Ali wrote: Absolutely correct. Proof reading good ;)! It was RAID 1. I'm guessing that the cosmic ray flipped the bit in transit to the mailing list server. :-D Interesting. Is there an official RAID level for three drive parity? I'm not aware of one. But my ignorance thereof does not preclude it from existing. True. That is one of the points the article makes too. Basically, you can't get the data fast enough but that would be inherent in both SW and HW implementations. The only way to overcome that is to use SSDs I would think. It's the same problem. It's just that the speed limit / goal post has been moved further out, hopefully in front of the choke point. That is nice. I may have to look at it next time I do a RAID implementation. ;-) -- Grant. . . . unix || die
Re: System Pro WAS RE: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
On 7/16/20 12:07 PM, Ali wrote: MS LanMan was Microsoft's networking OS of choice before NT. The base OS I believe was based on MS OS/2 1.31. Hum. I'm trying to discern if it was it's own independent OS, or if it was more a package of a COTS OS (OS/2) and LAN Man package, like Back Office / Small Business Server are Windows Server OS and packages. Wiki has some more info: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAN_Manager I have a copy of it somewhere. Here is a picture of the package: 3.bp.blogspot.com/-KaapV596wY0/WLSlOaIjSJI/AdU/VNNQtD-iqjs7ZkvuQGqD7-vP0vmFbQfUwCLcB/s1600/s-l300.jpg Hum. Now I want to find a copy of it to mess with to see what exactly it is. I really thought it was a product on top of a COTS OS. Thank you for enlightening me Ali. -- Grant. . . . unix || die
Re: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
On Wed, Jul 15, 2020 at 01:09:21PM -0700, Ali via cctalk wrote: [Hardware RAID controllers] >> There is no good use case for them in 2020, which is why they're all >> suddenly quite cheap. > Why do you say that? Not disagreeing per se but just wondering the reasoning > behind it. On the "no good use case" front: I avoid hardware RAID controllers for a variety of reasons, which mostly boil down to the use of proprietary firmware and naïve RAID implementations. These also apply to many software RAID implementations which blindly copied them. The biggie is that proprietary RAID means proprietary on-disk formats. If the controller fails, you need to find a replacement which understands the old on-disk format. Good luck with that. Related is the generally shoddy nature of firmware, and it's usually hard-to-impossible to e.g. query the SMART status of individual disks. The next-biggie is the RAID Write Hole. A traditional RAID implementation will rewrite data you might consider to be at rest because it shares a stripe with newly-written data, and on failure can corrupt said at-rest data. This is a fundamental problem which hardware RAID controllers try to mitigate by having a battery backup unit to deal with power failures, and can (potentially) also work independently of an OS which crashed mid-write, but it doesn't really solve it. What if your power stays out longer than the battery lasts? Software RAID which implements traditional RAID cannot even apply this mitigation and this is one of the reasons it has a bad reputation. The obvious solution is to not implement tradional RAID, which is where ZFS and similar copy-on-write journalled filesystem-cum-volume-managers come in. The last bastion of hardware RAID controllers was if one was using a toy operating system such as Windows where the software RAID options were woeful or nonexistent, but it now has Storage Spaces. On the "suddenly quite cheap" front: Plain SAS controllers based on e.g. the LSI 9207 or 9211 are north of €100, whereas MegaRAID controllers based on the LSI 9260 have plummeted to €30. The former either supports pass-through mode out of the box or after reflashing with "IT" firmware, but the latter does not. ZFS does work atop RAID (of either flavour), but is more robust if it can manage the raw disks directly. A workaround with hardware RAID cards which won't do pass-through is to configure them with single-disk RAID0 volumes, but this is somewhat untidy and still has the problem of proprietary on-disk formats and general inscrutability.
RE: System Pro WAS RE: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
> > Please elaborate on what you mean by "the full server OS". MS LanMan was Microsoft's networking OS of choice before NT. The base OS I believe was based on MS OS/2 1.31. Wiki has some more info: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAN_Manager I have a copy of it somewhere. Here is a picture of the package: 3.bp.blogspot.com/-KaapV596wY0/WLSlOaIjSJI/AdU/VNNQtD-iqjs7ZkvuQGqD7-vP0vmFbQfUwCLcB/s1600/s-l300.jpg -Ali
RE: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
> Are you sure that was RAID 0 (zero), /striping/? I've never heard of > /software/ RAID 0 (striping) for the /boot/ drive in Windows. I would > expect that to be RAID 1 or something other than the drive with > NTLDR.EXE on it. I also suspect that the drive with %SystemRoot% on it > would need to more conducive to loading driver and software RAID > support > files very early in the boot process. Absolutely correct. Proof reading good ;)! It was RAID 1. > That's one of the reasons that ZFS supports three drives worth of > redundancy in addition to the data space. RAID Z1 / Z2 / Z3. > Interesting. Is there an official RAID level for three drive parity? The Areca controllers do combined levels (e.g. 60 for two RAID 6 arrays stripped) but I don't think they do mirroring of parity RAID levels. > I think that the CPU overhead / computation time is now largely > insignificant. To me, one of the biggest issues is the simple massing > amount of data that needs to be read from and written to multiple > drives. At full interface speed, some drives can take a LONG time to > transfer all the data. What's worse is the sustained I/O speed to > platters of spinning rust being significantly slower than the interface > speed. True. That is one of the points the article makes too. Basically, you can't get the data fast enough but that would be inherent in both SW and HW implementations. The only way to overcome that is to use SSDs I would think. > Only have a few hundred GB on that multi TB RAID array > consisteng of multipel 1 TB drives? Fine. Only need to check the few > hundred GB. It's actually quite fast. That is nice. I may have to look at it next time I do a RAID implementation. -Ali
Re: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
On Thu, Jul 16, 2020 at 08:52:16AM -0700, Ali via cctalk wrote: [...] > This is an article (for the layman) written in 2010 predicting the lack of > usability of RAID 6 by 2019: > www.zdnet.com/article/why-raid-6-stops-working-in-2019/. I found the math in > it interesting and the conclusions pretty true to my experience. The author screwed up his maths and also made faulty assumptions. The article states that "SATA drives are commonly specified with an unrecoverable read error rate (URE) of 10^14. Which means that once every 200,000,000 sectors, the disk will not be able to read a sector." and then "2 hundred million sectors is about 12 terabytes." It seems he is using a sector size of 64kiB. Standard SATA disks have 4kiB sectors. "At that point the RAID reconstruction stops". Maybe on his garbage hardware RAID controller with 64kiB stripes which chokes on a single-bit error in a stripe because it's too dumb to figure out which disk is lying. ZFS is somewhat smarter than that. > I am wondering if SW RAID is faster in rebuild times by now (using the full > power of the multi-core processors) vs. a dedicated HW controller (even one > with dual cores). Not only is software RAID faster now, but this has been the case for at least 15 years. The necessary calculations are trivially vectorisable and are usually limited by memory bandwidth. Which is several orders of magnitude faster than a hard disk.
Re: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
On 7/16/20 9:52 AM, Ali via cctalk wrote: I have never used a SW RAID solution (except for a RAID 0 on Win2K3 for the boot drive) Are you sure that was RAID 0 (zero), /striping/? I've never heard of /software/ RAID 0 (striping) for the /boot/ drive in Windows. I would expect that to be RAID 1 or something other than the drive with NTLDR.EXE on it. I also suspect that the drive with %SystemRoot% on it would need to more conducive to loading driver and software RAID support files very early in the boot process. and have used HW controllers in my more recent systems (I am particular to the Areca Controllers - cheap but effective with a good feature mix). I've completely lost track of hardware RAID controllers. I'm now more interested in I.T. HBA controllers to use with ZFS based software RAID. What I find problematic with RAID (specially RAID 6) is that with the larger drives we have in use today build (or more importantly rebuild/recovery) times are extremely long. Long enough that you could have a second drive failure during that time based on statistics. That's one of the reasons that ZFS supports three drives worth of redundancy in addition to the data space. RAID Z1 / Z2 / Z3. I think we are quickly getting to the point, if not past it, where a /single/ RAID array can't safely hold the entirety of the necessary storage. Instead, I see multiple smaller RAID arrays aggregated together at a higher layer. I've seen this done by striping / JBODing / LVMing / etc. multiple discrete RAID arrays together in the OS. ZFS natively does this by striping (RAID 0) across multiple underlying RAID sets (of whatever RAID level you want). This is an article (for the layman) written in 2010 predicting the lack of usability of RAID 6 by 2019: www.zdnet.com/article/why-raid-6-stops-working-in-2019/. I found the math in it interesting and the conclusions pretty true to my experience. I am wondering if SW RAID is faster in rebuild times by now (using the full power of the multi-core processors) vs. a dedicated HW controller (even one with dual cores). I think that the CPU overhead / computation time is now largely insignificant. To me, one of the biggest issues is the simple massing amount of data that needs to be read from and written to multiple drives. At full interface speed, some drives can take a LONG time to transfer all the data. What's worse is the sustained I/O speed to platters of spinning rust being significantly slower than the interface speed. This is where some intelligence in the RAID implementation is really nice. There is very little need to rebuild the yet unused area of a big RAID array. ZFS shines in this as it only (re)builds the area that has any data on it. Only have a few hundred GB on that multi TB RAID array consisteng of multipel 1 TB drives? Fine. Only need to check the few hundred GB. It's actually quite fast. -- Grant. . . . unix || die
Re: System Pro WAS RE: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
On 7/16/20 9:40 AM, Ali via cctalk wrote: there was even a version of MS LanMan (the full server OS not the client) Please elaborate on what you mean by "the full server OS". My understanding is that Microsoft LAN Manager was an /add-on/ product that could be installed /on/ /top/ /of/ an /existing/ server OS. I've seen MS LAN Man in associateion with DOS, Windows (3.x / NT), and OS/2. There is also IBM LAN Manager. I can't articulate the differences between IBM and Microsoft LAN Manager. Much like I can't articulate the differences between IBM OS/2 and Microsoft OS/2. -- Grant. . . . unix || die
NCR 3550 Digital Library Was Re: System Pro WAS RE: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
Now in terms of the most MANLY system I worked on, that would be the NCR3550 we had at the IEEE Computer Society. When I arrived in 1993 it had been donated, but was doing nothing with 4 486 CPUs in it and a weird copy of AT unix. I took one look at the 256 bit interleaved memory architecture the 3 levels of cache with affinity, the infinite amount of space for disks, and the dual micro-channel busses and fell in *love* We talked to NCR, upgraded it to 512mb memory, 8 Pentium Pro/200 CPUs, and dual Microchannel busses with FDDI and Ethernet interfaces. Loaded it with disks, installed Windows NT 4.0 on it, and turned it into TALOS, the main server for the IEEE Computer Society's Digital Library (which I built). Partnered with Anderson and Netscape to multi-thread commerce server (SSL), built an E-account system in Lotus Domino/Notes, and loaded up all of our SGML with an SGML to HTML converter (Dynaweb) and a custom tool that could convert Tek math to GIFs on the fly. That process could take advantage of all 8 CPUs and render complex math articles in real time. Also did e-commerce for awhile with online credit card processing for memberships and conferences (SuperComputing/95 was the first conference to do on-line credit cards, I built that too because I was sick and tired of keying in the cards myself. Laziness is next to godliness) It served for years as the CS Digital Library core server with 30,000-40,000 accounts in active use. Man that thing was a truck, I wish I knew what had happened to it. And to think, it all started with the computer room ceiling collapsing from all the RS232 cables from the Vax and crushing our Sun Sparc 20 web server that kicked off this whole thing. I should write a book or an article about that. We did so much that was so... new... and all of that could be forgotten like tears in the rain CZ On 7/16/2020 11:40 AM, Ali via cctalk wrote: Had a full compliment of memory, max internal disk on the ATA controller, ATA? That long ago? Possible but unusual in a server, I would have thought. Funny story about that - I just setup a Systempro XL at home to play with. It is fully decked out w/ dual processor 50MHZ 486s (not DX2), 512MB of memory, a 4GB SCSI Boot Drive and six 2GB SCSI drives in RAID 5. The Compaq systems came standard with what Compaq called the IDA (Intelligent Drive Array). It was IDE based but did not use standard IDE drives. I think it could do RAID 0, 1, and 3 (or the equivalents there of). Compaq even had a few iterations of the controller and cached ones. Interestingly the Systempro XL had a SCSI 2 controller on the MB mainly used for the tape dive or CD while the base config came with an IDA 2 controller and could have up to eight drives. In addition you could install extra IDA controllers for even more drives or to drive external boxes. Or you could upgrade to a SCSI array - which is what I have running in my Systempro XL. What OS, just out of interest? Target OS was WinNT 3.1 initially and then 4.0. 2K was also supported but the machine really was not meant for 2k. You could also run OS/2, Novell Netware, Compaq DOS, and supposedly there was even a version of MS LanMan (the full server OS not the client) for the Systempro that allowed SMP. -Ali
RE: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
> With modern hardware, it's easier, cheaper and more flexible to build > and manage arrays in software, using modern filesystems such as ZFS, > Btrfs, or MS Storage Spaces on Windows Server. I have never used a SW RAID solution (except for a RAID 0 on Win2K3 for the boot drive) and have used HW controllers in my more recent systems (I am particular to the Areca Controllers - cheap but effective with a good feature mix). What I find problematic with RAID (specially RAID 6) is that with the larger drives we have in use today build (or more importantly rebuild/recovery) times are extremely long. Long enough that you could have a second drive failure during that time based on statistics. This is an article (for the layman) written in 2010 predicting the lack of usability of RAID 6 by 2019: www.zdnet.com/article/why-raid-6-stops-working-in-2019/. I found the math in it interesting and the conclusions pretty true to my experience. I am wondering if SW RAID is faster in rebuild times by now (using the full power of the multi-core processors) vs. a dedicated HW controller (even one with dual cores). -Ali
System Pro WAS RE: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
> > Had a full compliment of memory, > > max internal disk on the ATA controller, > > ATA? That long ago? > > Possible but unusual in a server, I would have thought. Funny story about that - I just setup a Systempro XL at home to play with. It is fully decked out w/ dual processor 50MHZ 486s (not DX2), 512MB of memory, a 4GB SCSI Boot Drive and six 2GB SCSI drives in RAID 5. The Compaq systems came standard with what Compaq called the IDA (Intelligent Drive Array). It was IDE based but did not use standard IDE drives. I think it could do RAID 0, 1, and 3 (or the equivalents there of). Compaq even had a few iterations of the controller and cached ones. Interestingly the Systempro XL had a SCSI 2 controller on the MB mainly used for the tape dive or CD while the base config came with an IDA 2 controller and could have up to eight drives. In addition you could install extra IDA controllers for even more drives or to drive external boxes. Or you could upgrade to a SCSI array - which is what I have running in my Systempro XL. > > What OS, just out of interest? Target OS was WinNT 3.1 initially and then 4.0. 2K was also supported but the machine really was not meant for 2k. You could also run OS/2, Novell Netware, Compaq DOS, and supposedly there was even a version of MS LanMan (the full server OS not the client) for the Systempro that allowed SMP. -Ali
Re: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
ATA? That long ago? Sorry, IDE like. Forgot the terminology. You could put 4 drives on a controller, then two controllers per unit (EISA was cool). Possible but unusual in a server, I would have thought. What OS, just out of interest? I think it was SCO Unix. A single box? Oh dear. We were so silly back then :-) I've had catastrophic hardware failures, but luckily, none that took out a RAID controller. I've just heard the horror stories. I remember pulling it. There was a hole where one of the ASIC chips was. Pretty amazing to be honest, but oh well. Compaq took it back to the factory for review. I finally left the support business in about 2011, but by then, it was fairly standard practice to install VMware (the free VMware ESX hypervisor if the company didn't have a paid vSphere site licence) on all new boxes, then install the OS in that. Even if it was a dedicated machine that only ran 1 OS ever. Because that way, if the machine died, you could restore the backup onto a new, totally different box, so long as it was running ESX, and it would Just Work™ with no driver or activation issues -- the virtualised hardware was the same. VMWare was *great*. I started using it on a small IBM box, then once I realized it was like a true mainframe OS we bought a pair of IBM 366's and a DS4300 SAN. Then upgraded the CPUs on them (4 CPUs). Then a set of DS4700 SANs (redundant arrays of arrays with 2 controllers per array). Then got a third so we could always run 2/3 of the cluster as opposed to 50% (for failover, see SystemPro). Then 3850's and 3950's with QPI memory sharing. God that worked, I was able to get 70-80 servers per box running away Much cheaper to run systems there than in the cloud. But everyone loves the cloud, so off we go. C
Re: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
On 7/16/20 5:36 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: It gets very complicated but it's also very powerful and flexible. Dedicated hardware just can't do stuff like this any more. I largely agree for data stored on the systems. However, PCs and compatibles, have long had an issue /reliably/ booting across multiple drives. Especially with a soft failure on the primary boot device. As such, I find it much more convenient to have a hardware RAID controller for at least the OS boot files. Then use all the fancy feautes like you mention for data files. -- Grant. . . . unix || die
Re: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 at 14:09, Chris Zach via cctalk wrote: > > Funny story about that: In 1990 I installed a Compaq systempro for > Hechinger's that cost over $100,000. I just about remember the SystemPro machines. One of my bigger clients in my first job got one, but they hired a full-time guy to customise their app for it, and he also became the sysadmin. A very early example of devops, I suppose. So I never got to play around with it. :-( > Had a full compliment of memory, > max internal disk on the ATA controller, ATA? That long ago? Possible but unusual in a server, I would have thought. What OS, just out of interest? > and two external boxes of disks > with the smart SCSI-ish controller. Massive system running Sybase SQL. > Designed to replace a 24*7 mainframe and expected to be up all the time. A single box? Oh dear. > Got a call 2 months later: The system had blown a hole in one of the > disk controllers and was down. Called Compaq, they got someone on a > plane with a spare controller from the west coast and I drove out to > meet them in the middle of the night so we could get the system up by > morning. > > That was pretty insane. And pointed out that "mainframe" PC's didn't > have anywhere near the redundancy or support of true mainframes. Oh yes indeed. I've had catastrophic hardware failures, but luckily, none that took out a RAID controller. I've just heard the horror stories. I finally left the support business in about 2011, but by then, it was fairly standard practice to install VMware (the free VMware ESX hypervisor if the company didn't have a paid vSphere site licence) on all new boxes, then install the OS in that. Even if it was a dedicated machine that only ran 1 OS ever. Because that way, if the machine died, you could restore the backup onto a new, totally different box, so long as it was running ESX, and it would Just Work™ with no driver or activation issues -- the virtualised hardware was the same. -- Liam Proven – Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk – gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven – Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 – ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
Re: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
And of course, if your server dies, then the array can be mounted on any other box with the same OS and you can retrieve data from it -- which is far more difficult if a hardware RAID controller dies, in which case you might need the same firmware revision etc., and possibly onboard controller config info. Funny story about that: In 1990 I installed a Compaq systempro for Hechinger's that cost over $100,000. Had a full compliment of memory, max internal disk on the ATA controller, and two external boxes of disks with the smart SCSI-ish controller. Massive system running Sybase SQL. Designed to replace a 24*7 mainframe and expected to be up all the time. Got a call 2 months later: The system had blown a hole in one of the disk controllers and was down. Called Compaq, they got someone on a plane with a spare controller from the west coast and I drove out to meet them in the middle of the night so we could get the system up by morning. That was pretty insane. And pointed out that "mainframe" PC's didn't have anywhere near the redundancy or support of true mainframes. C
Re: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
On Wed, 15 Jul 2020 at 22:09, Ali via cctalk wrote: > > > There is no good use case for them in 2020, which is why they're all > > suddenly > > quite cheap. > > Peter, > > Why do you say that? Not disagreeing per se but just wondering the reasoning > behind it. Happily for me I don't do stuff like build production servers any more, but my understanding is this: With modern hardware, it's easier, cheaper and more flexible to build and manage arrays in software, using modern filesystems such as ZFS, Btrfs, or MS Storage Spaces on Windows Server. I was recently documenting the use of Btrfs for this on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server: the benefits of doing it in software are that you can dynamically migrate arrays between different RAID levels, add new drives and resize the array to include them or add them as additional parity disks on the fly, you can mark individual files as having different RAID levels (for example, you could place the OS' virtual memory space in a file on the RAID and tell the filesystem not to compute parity for it, just stripe it, for better performance). ZFS and Ceph allow for a mix of high-speed (e.g. SSD, NVMe, even NVDIMM) storage and low-speed but large rotational storage, and use the faster storage to cache the slower stuff. And of course, if your server dies, then the array can be mounted on any other box with the same OS and you can retrieve data from it -- which is far more difficult if a hardware RAID controller dies, in which case you might need the same firmware revision etc., and possibly onboard controller config info. Ceph now basically lets you build arrays of storage servers, so that you can, say, have single storage volumes comprising local storage in different countries, or on different continents, for local access speed and the software syncs it in the background between zones or regions. So it's no longer an array of physical disks on one server, it's an array of servers with disks in them -- and the servers and the disks may themselves be virtualised. It gets very complicated but it's also very powerful and flexible. Dedicated hardware just can't do stuff like this any more. -- Liam Proven – Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk – gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven – Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 – ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
RE: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
> There is no good use case for them in 2020, which is why they're all > suddenly > quite cheap. Peter, Why do you say that? Not disagreeing per se but just wondering the reasoning behind it. -Ali
Re: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
On 7/15/20 2:16 AM, Peter Corlett via cctalk wrote: ...I'm in the market for a plain SAS HBA for use with ZFS. Check and see if you can flash the Initiator Target (IT) firmware onto the RAID card such that it's no longer an Integrated RAID (IR) device. Thus giving you the HBA mode that you want. I've done this on a few RAID chip sets built into Supermicro motherboards and been quite happily running ZFS on them. }:-) -- Grant. . . . unix || die
Re: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
On Tue, Jul 14, 2020 at 10:47:11AM -0700, Ali via cctalk wrote: [...] > Is there any reason a Smart Array controller can't be used as a simple SCSI > controller? I.E. No array, just using it to drive a tape library? TIA! In general, hardware RAID controllers cannot be used as ordinary controllers. There is no good use case for them in 2020, which is why they're all suddenly quite cheap. Much cheaper in fact than non-RAID controllers, IME, which irks me as I'm in the market for a plain SAS HBA for use with ZFS.
Re: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
On Jul 14, 2020, at 12:22 PM, Ali via cctech wrote: > I think Dave hit it on the head. The Smart Array controllers apparently only > take HDDs and no other SCSI devices. Not all of them. But it is a model-by-model "feature", and maybe not at all on any models prior to some generation. I have a tape library (and only a tape library) attached to a Smart Array P212, but this is a much newer (SAS) host adapter than the 3200. I vaguely recall having had to do some reading of spec sheets to find out that this one would work with tape. ok bear. -- until further notice
RE: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
> Nope. I don’t remember any Smart Array controllers supporting > passthrough tapes until much later on. You just need a Wide Ultra 2 or > 3 adapter for libraries, eg 154457-B21. There’s no mention of tape > support in the install manual either. > Thanks. I actually needed a dual port beasty so I am going to throw in an Adaptec 39160. The MSL5026 won't even come close to taxing the Adaptec but it has a Compaq ROM and is directly supported by SmartStart. -Ali
Re: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
On 7/14/20 12:41 PM, Dave Wade via cctalk wrote: I know you can define a JBOD but a JBOD is not passed through as a physical disk. JBOD / single disk RAID 0 is different than pass through. I've worked with a few RAID cards that did support actual pass-through mode. I've not had any problems with things that are truly passed through. But I've not seen it many times. (Likely an effect of the corpus that I've worked with.) -- Grant. . . . unix || die
Re: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
> On 14 Jul 2020, at 18:47, Ali via cctalk wrote: > > This may be a bit too new for this list but I thought what the heck - maybe > one of you Compaq/DEC/HP guys would know: > > Is there any reason a Smart Array controller can't be used as a simple SCSI > controller? I.E. No array, just using it to drive a tape library? TIA! > Nope. I don’t remember any Smart Array controllers supporting passthrough tapes until much later on. You just need a Wide Ultra 2 or 3 adapter for libraries, eg 154457-B21. There’s no mention of tape support in the install manual either. -- Adrian Graham Owner of Binary Dinosaurs, the UK's biggest private home computer collection? t: @binarydinosaursf: facebook.com/binarydinosaurs w: www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk
RE: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
> -Original Message- > From: Ali > Sent: 14 July 2020 20:22 > To: 'Dave Wade' ; 'General Discussion: On-Topic > and Off-Topic Posts' > Subject: RE: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller > > > Ali, > > Its been a long time, but I think the answer is no. A tape is not a > > disk and uses a different SCSI command set to a disk. For example you > > can't rewind a disk. > > > > I found a SmartArray 3200 manual here:- > > > > http://index-of.es/Tutorials/Proliant%201600/SmartArray3200.pdf > > > > and in the Q it says :- > > > > Q. Does the Smart Array 3200 Controller support SCSI tape drives and > > CD-ROM drives? > > A. No; the Smart Array 3200 Controller only supports Wide-Ultra2 > > SCSI,Wide-Ultra SCSI-3, Fast-Wide SCSI-2, and Fast SCSI-2 hard drives. > > > > So I would say not. > > Dave, > > RTFM - Read The Friggin Manual. :) That pretty much settles it. Thanks for > finding that bit of info. I am going to throw in an Adaptec controller in there > and call it done! > > -Ali Ali, No probs! It has been a long time since I worked for Compaq, but I remember having huge issues with mixing tapes and disks and RAID controller compatibility. We used to have a big spreadsheet that showed all the compatible controllers/devices/operating systems, but even that failed us at times. Oddly, my old Microchannel Cheetah RAID controller in my P390 supports tapes and CD ROMS Dave
RE: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
> Can you move one HDD to the SMARTarray (to make it happy) and put the > tape library on the 5304? > > My concern is that some RAID cards don't like to present things other > than (logical / virtual) hard drives to the host OS. So I'm not sure > if > the tape drive will work connected to it or not. Grant, I think Dave hit it on the head. The Smart Array controllers apparently only take HDDs and no other SCSI devices. I guess I am going to have to throw in a Adaptec card after all. -Ali
RE: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
> Ali, > Its been a long time, but I think the answer is no. A tape is not a > disk and > uses a different SCSI command set to a disk. For example you can't > rewind a > disk. > > I found a SmartArray 3200 manual here:- > > http://index-of.es/Tutorials/Proliant%201600/SmartArray3200.pdf > > and in the Q it says :- > > Q. Does the Smart Array 3200 Controller support SCSI tape drives and > CD-ROM > drives? > A. No; the Smart Array 3200 Controller only supports Wide-Ultra2 > SCSI,Wide-Ultra SCSI-3, Fast-Wide SCSI-2, and Fast SCSI-2 hard drives. > > So I would say not. Dave, RTFM - Read The Friggin Manual. :) That pretty much settles it. Thanks for finding that bit of info. I am going to throw in an Adaptec controller in there and call it done! -Ali
RE: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
Ali, Its been a long time, but I think the answer is no. A tape is not a disk and uses a different SCSI command set to a disk. For example you can't rewind a disk. I found a SmartArray 3200 manual here:- http://index-of.es/Tutorials/Proliant%201600/SmartArray3200.pdf and in the Q it says :- Q. Does the Smart Array 3200 Controller support SCSI tape drives and CD-ROM drives? A. No; the Smart Array 3200 Controller only supports Wide-Ultra2 SCSI,Wide-Ultra SCSI-3, Fast-Wide SCSI-2, and Fast SCSI-2 hard drives. So I would say not. I know you can define a JBOD but a JBOD is not passed through as a physical disk. In most RAID controllers you can still carve up a JBOD into multiple LUNS. The devices the OS sees are "logical abstractions" of the devices the RAID controller sees and need to be be mapped to the physical devices in the controller. Dave G4UGM > -Original Message- > From: cctalk On Behalf Of Ali via cctalk > Sent: 14 July 2020 18:47 > To: 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts' > > Subject: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller > > This may be a bit too new for this list but I thought what the heck - maybe > one of you Compaq/DEC/HP guys would know: > > Is there any reason a Smart Array controller can't be used as a simple SCSI > controller? I.E. No array, just using it to drive a tape library? TIA! > > -Ali > >
Re: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
On 7/14/20 12:08 PM, Ali via cctalk wrote: Thanks. To be clear there are no HDDs connected to the controller (there is a separate 5304 controller that has all the HDDs on it). I just did not have enough external ports on the 5304 to drive the tape library so I wanted to repurpose the original 3200 controller. I would think it would not be an issue but the system keeps complaining on boot that there are no physical drives (I assume it means HDDs) connected to the 3200. Can you move one HDD to the SMARTarray (to make it happy) and put the tape library on the 5304? My concern is that some RAID cards don't like to present things other than (logical / virtual) hard drives to the host OS. So I'm not sure if the tape drive will work connected to it or not. -- Grant. . . . unix || die
RE: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
> All the Smart Array controllers, to my knowledge, have the ability to > run as a JBOD, so I imagine that would work. The biggest issue I've > found with older SA controllers, is getting them configured (and driver > support for really old ones on modern OSes). Jason, Thanks. To be clear there are no HDDs connected to the controller (there is a separate 5304 controller that has all the HDDs on it). I just did not have enough external ports on the 5304 to drive the tape library so I wanted to repurpose the original 3200 controller. I would think it would not be an issue but the system keeps complaining on boot that there are no physical drives (I assume it means HDDs) connected to the 3200. -Ali
Re: Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
On 7/14/20 10:47 AM, Ali via cctalk wrote: This may be a bit too new for this list but I thought what the heck - maybe one of you Compaq/DEC/HP guys would know: Is there any reason a Smart Array controller can't be used as a simple SCSI controller? I.E. No array, just using it to drive a tape library? TIA! -Ali All the Smart Array controllers, to my knowledge, have the ability to run as a JBOD, so I imagine that would work. The biggest issue I've found with older SA controllers, is getting them configured (and driver support for really old ones on modern OSes). --Jason
Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller as a SCSI Controller
This may be a bit too new for this list but I thought what the heck - maybe one of you Compaq/DEC/HP guys would know: Is there any reason a Smart Array controller can't be used as a simple SCSI controller? I.E. No array, just using it to drive a tape library? TIA! -Ali
