Re: ICH5R, ICH7R or Promise PDC20378 RAID?
- Original Message - From: Philippe Lang [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Ted Mittelstaedt [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Doug Poland [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: freebsd-questions freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 2:32 AM Subject: RE: ICH5R, ICH7R or Promise PDC20378 RAID? Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: On Mon, Jun 19, 2006 at 10:18:05AM +0200, Philippe Lang wrote: Hi, I've got two boxes that would be perfect for a small server. The motherboards are: - ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe, with ICH5R and Promise PDC20378 - ASUS P5WD2, with ICH7R I intend to install FreeBSD 6.1, and I wonder which chipset you would recommend me for RAID 1? I need something rock-solid, of course... I'm running -STABLE on a P4C800-E. I've never had a problem with the PDC20378. Recently, I added two drives on the ICH5R with no issues. A little benchmarking shows the ICH5R to be a little faster. Hi, I wasn't as lucky as Doug with my ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe board, both with the ICH5R and Promise RAID controller. 1) With the Promise controller, after simulating a disk problem (shutdown - disk disconnection - reboot - shutdown - disk reconnection - reboot), I wasn't able to rebuild the array at all, either with atacontrol rebuild ar0 or from the bios. I suspect a spare disk is necessary for a complete rebuild. 2) With the ICH5R controller, installation went fine too. If I disconnect a disk, the system still boots, but when I plug the disk back (computer shut down), no boot is possible anymore. At boot, a kernel panic says: softdep_setup_inomapdep. No array rebuild is possible from the bios, so I'm stuck. You need to take the disk you unplugged to some other machine and wipe it, then make sure the one disk with the system left on it is in the 0 position, put the wiped disk in the 1 position, then you should be able to boot. Your simulating a failure when you pull the one disk, but your not simulating a recovery when you insert that disk back in. Ted Hi, I'm sure there are solutions to make things work, but personnaly, I don't feel confortable with a RAID system that acts that way, and that is supposed to make the whole system more robust and problem-free. Your missing the point. If a disk crashes it wipes the metafile off the disk. If you want to simulate a disk crash, issue a raid detach command first, then pull the disk. The ata raid in the ata driver isn't written to handle the condition of a disk being pulled that has nothing wrong with it then reinserted. It is written to handle the condition of a disk crashing, then being pulled, then a new one replaced. I used to play with hardware SCSI RAID controllers, and was never able to trash the system. I have SCSI raid controllers too that I can do that with. But keep in mind that these controllers firmware is written to if a disk is pulled then replaced, it immediately assumes that the disk is toast, and rebuilds it from scratch. Arrays are being rebuilt in the background, that's just great. I hope this is the kind of ease and quality I will get with the 3WARE raid controller I have ordered... Apparently, everyone says very good things about 3WARE. The only problem we had with ours is that the very latest firmware did not work with the FreeBSD driver. This was about 3-4 months ago though so they might have fixed that problem. We always automatically update all cards we buy to the latest firmware before we install them for the first time, that is why we hit that problem. Ted ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: ICH5R, ICH7R or Promise PDC20378 RAID?
Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: Hi, I'm sure there are solutions to make things work, but personnaly, I don't feel confortable with a RAID system that acts that way, and that is supposed to make the whole system more robust and problem-free. Your missing the point. If a disk crashes it wipes the metafile off the disk. If you want to simulate a disk crash, issue a raid detach command first, then pull the disk. The ata raid in the ata driver isn't written to handle the condition of a disk being pulled that has nothing wrong with it then reinserted. It is written to handle the condition of a disk crashing, then being pulled, then a new one replaced. I used to play with hardware SCSI RAID controllers, and was never able to trash the system. I have SCSI raid controllers too that I can do that with. But keep in mind that these controllers firmware is written to if a disk is pulled then replaced, it immediately assumes that the disk is toast, and rebuilds it from scratch. Hi, I'm not an expert in RAID Ted, and I don't want to be. Simply, in situations where a disk crashes, and the server is not redundant anymore, I prefer having a controller that I can rely on, both eyes closed. I have just installed the 3WARE controller this morning, and did the exact same operations I did with the ICH5/7R and onboard Promise controller of my ASUS boards. It's simply not comparable at all, and for a really affordable price. The server did not crash, and is by the way rebuilding the RAID at the moment... Despite all my efforts, I was not able to trash it. A 3WARE controller is really worth the investment, really. Cheers, --- Philippe Lang Attik System smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature
Re: ICH5R, ICH7R or Promise PDC20378 RAID?
- Original Message - From: Philippe Lang [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Ted Mittelstaedt [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Doug Poland [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: freebsd-questions freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Sent: Friday, June 23, 2006 1:46 AM Subject: RE: ICH5R, ICH7R or Promise PDC20378 RAID? Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: Hi, I'm sure there are solutions to make things work, but personnaly, I don't feel confortable with a RAID system that acts that way, and that is supposed to make the whole system more robust and problem-free. Your missing the point. If a disk crashes it wipes the metafile off the disk. If you want to simulate a disk crash, issue a raid detach command first, then pull the disk. The ata raid in the ata driver isn't written to handle the condition of a disk being pulled that has nothing wrong with it then reinserted. It is written to handle the condition of a disk crashing, then being pulled, then a new one replaced. I used to play with hardware SCSI RAID controllers, and was never able to trash the system. I have SCSI raid controllers too that I can do that with. But keep in mind that these controllers firmware is written to if a disk is pulled then replaced, it immediately assumes that the disk is toast, and rebuilds it from scratch. Hi, I'm not an expert in RAID Ted, and I don't want to be. Simply, in situations where a disk crashes, and the server is not redundant anymore, I prefer having a controller that I can rely on, both eyes closed. I have just installed the 3WARE controller this morning, and did the exact same operations I did with the ICH5/7R and onboard Promise controller of my ASUS boards. It's simply not comparable at all, and for a really affordable price. The server did not crash, and is by the way rebuilding the RAID at the moment... Despite all my efforts, I was not able to trash it. A 3WARE controller is really worth the investment, really. Ah, you must of missed the thread where I recommended the 3ware controller to someone complaining that there wasn't any hardware support for FreeBSD. I happen to have a couple of the 3ware controllers myself. The 3ware controller works but so does the integrated RAID in the ata driver - if you know how to handle it, and you have the right hardware. And granted, the man page does not do a good job of documenting how to recover from a crashed disk. However, not everyone thinks $200 USD is a really affordable price and if all you want to do is mirroring then the integrated ata RAID is fine. Keep in mind that in a 1U server, you don't have room for more than 2 disks anyway. The 3ware controller's main strength over the integrated RAID is that it has additional features, like RAID-5, offline rebuild, etc. Ted ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: ICH5R, ICH7R or Promise PDC20378 RAID?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: My conclusion, if you need something stable, don't use the onboard raid, get a RAID card even the cheap ones will do better job!! Hi, Thanks for the confirmation the onboard controller is not the way to go... What reliable and good raid controller would you recommend for a simple RAID 1 in SATA? I have just ordered a AMCC 3ware 8006-2LP, it seems to be the cheap controller I needed, with great support for FreeBSD. Cheers, --- Philippe Lang Attik System ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: ICH5R, ICH7R or Promise PDC20378 RAID?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, I wasn't as lucky as Doug with my ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe board, both with the ICH5R and Promise RAID controller. 1) With the Promise controller, after simulating a disk problem (shutdown - disk disconnection - reboot - shutdown - disk reconnection - reboot), I wasn't able to rebuild the array at all, either with atacontrol rebuild ar0 or from the bios. I suspect a spare disk is necessary for a complete rebuild. 2) With the ICH5R controller, installation went fine too. If I disconnect a disk, the system still boots, but when I plug the disk back (computer shut down), no boot is possible anymore. At boot, a kernel panic says: softdep_setup_inomapdep. No array rebuild is possible from the bios, so I'm stuck. I use freebsd 6.1 RELEASE, with the latest BIOS for the motherboard, and 2 SATA 1.0 Western Digital 160GB disks. I'm trying to configure RAID 1. I'm surprised I have so many problems. Am I doing anything wrong? With INTEL hardware controllers for SCSI disks, I never had any problems until now. Does anyone successfully use another ASUS board, and is able to rebuild the array, without rebooting? Thanks for your time, I have made some further tests with another ASUS board, with an INTEL ICH7R chipset. Installation of FreeBSD 6.1 went fine. I shut down the computer, disconnect a disk, reboot, and... And no reboot at all. Kernel panic. The ar raid driver seems to be very buggy... I'm looking forward to receiving my 3WARE RAID controllers... --- Philippe Lang Attik System ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: ICH5R, ICH7R or Promise PDC20378 RAID?
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Philippe Lang Sent: Tuesday, June 20, 2006 9:39 AM To: Doug Poland Cc: freebsd-questions Subject: RE: ICH5R, ICH7R or Promise PDC20378 RAID? [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, Jun 19, 2006 at 10:18:05AM +0200, Philippe Lang wrote: Hi, I've got two boxes that would be perfect for a small server. The motherboards are: - ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe, with ICH5R and Promise PDC20378 - ASUS P5WD2, with ICH7R I intend to install FreeBSD 6.1, and I wonder which chipset you would recommend me for RAID 1? I need something rock-solid, of course... I'm running -STABLE on a P4C800-E. I've never had a problem with the PDC20378. Recently, I added two drives on the ICH5R with no issues. A little benchmarking shows the ICH5R to be a little faster. Hi, I wasn't as lucky as Doug with my ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe board, both with the ICH5R and Promise RAID controller. 1) With the Promise controller, after simulating a disk problem (shutdown - disk disconnection - reboot - shutdown - disk reconnection - reboot), I wasn't able to rebuild the array at all, either with atacontrol rebuild ar0 or from the bios. I suspect a spare disk is necessary for a complete rebuild. 2) With the ICH5R controller, installation went fine too. If I disconnect a disk, the system still boots, but when I plug the disk back (computer shut down), no boot is possible anymore. At boot, a kernel panic says: softdep_setup_inomapdep. No array rebuild is possible from the bios, so I'm stuck. You need to take the disk you unplugged to some other machine and wipe it, then make sure the one disk with the system left on it is in the 0 position, put the wiped disk in the 1 position, then you should be able to boot. Your simulating a failure when you pull the one disk, but your not simulating a recovery when you insert that disk back in. Ted ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: ICH5R, ICH7R or Promise PDC20378 RAID?
Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: On Mon, Jun 19, 2006 at 10:18:05AM +0200, Philippe Lang wrote: Hi, I've got two boxes that would be perfect for a small server. The motherboards are: - ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe, with ICH5R and Promise PDC20378 - ASUS P5WD2, with ICH7R I intend to install FreeBSD 6.1, and I wonder which chipset you would recommend me for RAID 1? I need something rock-solid, of course... I'm running -STABLE on a P4C800-E. I've never had a problem with the PDC20378. Recently, I added two drives on the ICH5R with no issues. A little benchmarking shows the ICH5R to be a little faster. Hi, I wasn't as lucky as Doug with my ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe board, both with the ICH5R and Promise RAID controller. 1) With the Promise controller, after simulating a disk problem (shutdown - disk disconnection - reboot - shutdown - disk reconnection - reboot), I wasn't able to rebuild the array at all, either with atacontrol rebuild ar0 or from the bios. I suspect a spare disk is necessary for a complete rebuild. 2) With the ICH5R controller, installation went fine too. If I disconnect a disk, the system still boots, but when I plug the disk back (computer shut down), no boot is possible anymore. At boot, a kernel panic says: softdep_setup_inomapdep. No array rebuild is possible from the bios, so I'm stuck. You need to take the disk you unplugged to some other machine and wipe it, then make sure the one disk with the system left on it is in the 0 position, put the wiped disk in the 1 position, then you should be able to boot. Your simulating a failure when you pull the one disk, but your not simulating a recovery when you insert that disk back in. Ted Hi, I'm sure there are solutions to make things work, but personnaly, I don't feel confortable with a RAID system that acts that way, and that is supposed to make the whole system more robust and problem-free. I used to play with hardware SCSI RAID controllers, and was never able to trash the system. Arrays are being rebuilt in the background, that's just great. I hope this is the kind of ease and quality I will get with the 3WARE raid controller I have ordered... Apparently, everyone says very good things about 3WARE. --- Philippe Lang Attik System ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: ICH5R, ICH7R or Promise PDC20378 RAID?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, Jun 19, 2006 at 10:18:05AM +0200, Philippe Lang wrote: Hi, I've got two boxes that would be perfect for a small server. The motherboards are: - ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe, with ICH5R and Promise PDC20378 - ASUS P5WD2, with ICH7R I intend to install FreeBSD 6.1, and I wonder which chipset you would recommend me for RAID 1? I need something rock-solid, of course... I'm running -STABLE on a P4C800-E. I've never had a problem with the PDC20378. Recently, I added two drives on the ICH5R with no issues. A little benchmarking shows the ICH5R to be a little faster. Hi, I wasn't as lucky as Doug with my ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe board, both with the ICH5R and Promise RAID controller. 1) With the Promise controller, after simulating a disk problem (shutdown - disk disconnection - reboot - shutdown - disk reconnection - reboot), I wasn't able to rebuild the array at all, either with atacontrol rebuild ar0 or from the bios. I suspect a spare disk is necessary for a complete rebuild. 2) With the ICH5R controller, installation went fine too. If I disconnect a disk, the system still boots, but when I plug the disk back (computer shut down), no boot is possible anymore. At boot, a kernel panic says: softdep_setup_inomapdep. No array rebuild is possible from the bios, so I'm stuck. I use freebsd 6.1 RELEASE, with the latest BIOS for the motherboard, and 2 SATA 1.0 Western Digital 160GB disks. I'm trying to configure RAID 1. I'm surprised I have so many problems. Am I doing anything wrong? With INTEL hardware controllers for SCSI disks, I never had any problems until now. Does anyone successfully use another ASUS board, and is able to rebuild the array, without rebooting? Thanks for your time, Regards, -- Philippe Lang, Ing. Dipl. EPFL Attik System rte de la Fonderie 2 1700 Fribourg Switzerland http://www.attiksystem.ch Tel: +41 (26) 422 13 75 Fax: +41 (26) 422 13 76 ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: ICH5R, ICH7R or Promise PDC20378 RAID?
1) With the Promise controller, after simulating a disk problem (shutdown - disk disconnection - reboot - shutdown - disk reconnection - reboot), I wasn't able to rebuild the array at all, either with atacontrol rebuild ar0 or from the bios. I suspect a spare disk is necessary for a complete rebuild. 2) With the ICH5R controller, installation went fine too. If I disconnect a disk, the system still boots, but when I plug the disk back (computer shut down), no boot is possible anymore. At boot, a kernel panic says: softdep_setup_inomapdep. No array rebuild is possible from the bios, so I'm stuck. I use freebsd 6.1 RELEASE, with the latest BIOS for the motherboard, and 2 SATA 1.0 Western Digital 160GB disks. I'm trying to configure RAID 1. I'm surprised I have so many problems. Am I doing anything wrong? With INTEL hardware controllers for SCSI disks, I never had any problems until now. Does anyone successfully use another ASUS board, and is able to rebuild the array, without rebooting? Few things I noticed about the on-board Promise chipset on ASUS that it is very poorly designed. If you do the unplug/replug test, it most likely won't work, you need to use a spare drive or re-format the drive and then replug it. It also goes out of sync very often, so you want to make sure you're running consistency checks at least once a month. Sometimes when one of the RAID-1 drives develops bad sectors, the whole array won't boot until you unplug one of the drives, and plug a spare one. My conclusion, if you need something stable, don't use the onboard raid, get a RAID card even the cheap ones will do better job!! Tamouh ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: ICH5R, ICH7R or Promise PDC20378 RAID?
Not the promise. Ted -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Philippe Lang Sent: Monday, June 19, 2006 1:18 AM To: freebsd-questions Subject: ICH5R, ICH7R or Promise PDC20378 RAID? Hi, I've got two boxes that would be perfect for a small server. The motherboards are: - ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe, with ICH5R and Promise PDC20378 - ASUS P5WD2, with ICH7R I intend to install FreeBSD 6.1, and I wonder which chipset you would recommend me for RAID 1? I need something rock-solid, of course... Thanks! -- Philippe Lang Attik System Switzerland ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.1/369 - Release Date: 6/19/2006 ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: ICH5R, ICH7R or Promise PDC20378 RAID?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 1) With the Promise controller, after simulating a disk problem (shutdown - disk disconnection - reboot - shutdown - disk reconnection - reboot), I wasn't able to rebuild the array at all, either with atacontrol rebuild ar0 or from the bios. I suspect a spare disk is necessary for a complete rebuild. 2) With the ICH5R controller, installation went fine too. If I disconnect a disk, the system still boots, but when I plug the disk back (computer shut down), no boot is possible anymore. At boot, a kernel panic says: softdep_setup_inomapdep. No array rebuild is possible from the bios, so I'm stuck. I use freebsd 6.1 RELEASE, with the latest BIOS for the motherboard, and 2 SATA 1.0 Western Digital 160GB disks. I'm trying to configure RAID 1. I'm surprised I have so many problems. Am I doing anything wrong? With INTEL hardware controllers for SCSI disks, I never had any problems until now. Does anyone successfully use another ASUS board, and is able to rebuild the array, without rebooting? Few things I noticed about the on-board Promise chipset on ASUS that it is very poorly designed. If you do the unplug/replug test, it most likely won't work, you need to use a spare drive or re-format the drive and then replug it. It also goes out of sync very often, so you want to make sure you're running consistency checks at least once a month. Sometimes when one of the RAID-1 drives develops bad sectors, the whole array won't boot until you unplug one of the drives, and plug a spare one. My conclusion, if you need something stable, don't use the onboard raid, get a RAID card even the cheap ones will do better job!! Hi, Thanks for the confirmation the onboard controller is not the way to go... What reliable and good raid controller would you recommend for a simple RAID 1 in SATA? --- Philippe Lang Attik System ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
ICH5R, ICH7R or Promise PDC20378 RAID?
Hi, I've got two boxes that would be perfect for a small server. The motherboards are: - ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe, with ICH5R and Promise PDC20378 - ASUS P5WD2, with ICH7R I intend to install FreeBSD 6.1, and I wonder which chipset you would recommend me for RAID 1? I need something rock-solid, of course... Thanks! -- Philippe Lang Attik System Switzerland ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: ICH5R, ICH7R or Promise PDC20378 RAID?
On Mon, Jun 19, 2006 at 10:18:05AM +0200, Philippe Lang wrote: Hi, I've got two boxes that would be perfect for a small server. The motherboards are: - ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe, with ICH5R and Promise PDC20378 - ASUS P5WD2, with ICH7R I intend to install FreeBSD 6.1, and I wonder which chipset you would recommend me for RAID 1? I need something rock-solid, of course... I'm running -STABLE on a P4C800-E. I've never had a problem with the PDC20378. Recently, I added two drives on the ICH5R with no issues. A little benchmarking shows the ICH5R to be a little faster. HTH, -- Regards, Doug ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
