Tools for Hardware Raid?

Tools for Hardware Raid?

[Rick Bragg]

Hi,

Since my latest disaster was caused be me not monitoring raid disks, I
was wondering about tools for monitoring hardware based raid systems?

I have a Dell 1900 with a perc5 raid controller

# lspci
02:0e.0 RAID bus controller: Dell PowerEdge Expandable RAID controller 5

It is set up as RAID 10

I tried running smartctl on it, but that does not even work because the
system sees the array as just one disk.

I'm wondering how I can monitor the disks, etc...

Any advice?

Thanks
Rick

Re: Tools for Hardware Raid?

[Drew]

> I have a Dell 1900 with a perc5 raid controller
<snip>
> I'm wondering how I can monitor the disks, etc...

Most hardware RAID manufacturers have software you can download that
interfaces with the raid controller to monitor and/or make changes to
the underlying controller.

At work we use IBM servers which have a java based app called
ServeRAID that allows me to monitor the underlying RAID array, as well
as create new arrays while the system is live, which I have set to
notify me if something goes wrong.

That said, I don't know about Dell but our IBM's also have an orange
indicator light on the drive bays so if a drive is kicked I can see it
first thing when I get into the office to swap tapes. That's usually
the first warning I get that something is amiss.


-- 
Drew

"Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood."
--Marie Curie

RE: Tools for Hardware Raid?

[Leslie Rhorer]

> Most hardware RAID manufacturers have software you can download that
> interfaces with the raid controller to monitor and/or make changes to
> the underlying controller.
> 
> At work we use IBM servers which have a java based app called
> ServeRAID that allows me to monitor the underlying RAID array, as well
> as create new arrays while the system is live, which I have set to
> notify me if something goes wrong.
> 
> That said, I don't know about Dell but our IBM's also have an orange
> indicator light on the drive bays so if a drive is kicked I can see it
> first thing when I get into the office to swap tapes. That's usually
> the first warning I get that something is amiss.
> 
> 
> --
> Drew

	The thick clouds of rolling smoke and the open flames might also
lend a clue...  :-)

Re: Tools for Hardware Raid?

[Drew]

>        The thick clouds of rolling smoke and the open flames might also
> lend a clue...  :-)

If I see that we're beyond replacing drives. ;-)


-- 
Drew

"Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood."
--Marie Curie
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Re: Tools for Hardware Raid?

[John Robinson]

On 29/12/2009 14:52, Drew wrote:
>>        The thick clouds of rolling smoke and the open flames might also
>> lend a clue...  :-)
> 
> If I see that we're beyond replacing drives. ;-)

Not necessarily... I had a server once that was badly damaged in a fire, 
though not one that started inside the machine. The fire was an 
electrical one behind the machine, with the result that the motherboard 
and PSU were destroyed. The machine had two hard drives in a RAID-1 at 
the front, and one of them fared better, in that despite the scorch 
marks and smoky residue, it still worked. As a result the firm concerned 
were up and running again the same morning - once I'd found some nice 
people at IBM who whipped up a suitable replacement and gave it to a 
same day courier.

Of course I replaced the scorched drive the next day, once the array had 
rebuilt onto a fresh drive.

Sadly this is OT as the array concerned was on an IBM ServeRAID hardware 
RAID adapter.

Cheers,

John.

Re: Tools for Hardware Raid?

[Michal Soltys]

Rick Bragg wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Since my latest disaster was caused be me not monitoring raid disks, I
> was wondering about tools for monitoring hardware based raid systems?
> 
> I have a Dell 1900 with a perc5 raid controller
> 
> # lspci
> 02:0e.0 RAID bus controller: Dell PowerEdge Expandable RAID controller 5
> 
> It is set up as RAID 10
> 
> I tried running smartctl on it, but that does not even work because the
> system sees the array as just one disk.
> 
> I'm wondering how I can monitor the disks, etc...
> 
> Any advice?
> 
> Thanks
> Rick
> 

Most recent version (5.39) of smartmontools allows monitoring disks behind 
perc controllers - for example: smartctl -a -d megaraid,1 /dev/sda

I'm not using any perc at the moment, so no idea how well that works in 
practice - probably worth checking out though.

Re: Tools for Hardware Raid?

[Luca Berra]

On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 10:33:53AM -0500, Rick Bragg wrote:
>Hi,
>
>Since my latest disaster was caused be me not monitoring raid disks, I
>was wondering about tools for monitoring hardware based raid systems?
>
>I have a Dell 1900 with a perc5 raid controller
>
># lspci
>02:0e.0 RAID bus controller: Dell PowerEdge Expandable RAID controller 5

actually this should be a rebranded LSI megaraid
you can use the megacli tool (www.lsi.com) to monitor the array status.
i use a nagios plugin around it
L.

-- 
Luca Berra -- bluca@comedia.it
         Communication Media & Services S.r.l.
  /"\
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   X        AGAINST HTML MAIL
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Re: Tools for Hardware Raid?

[Andrea Dell'Amico]

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On Mon, 2009-12-28 at 10:33 -0500, Rick Bragg wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Since my latest disaster was caused be me not monitoring raid disks, I
> was wondering about tools for monitoring hardware based raid systems?
> 
> I have a Dell 1900 with a perc5 raid controller
> 
> # lspci
> 02:0e.0 RAID bus controller: Dell PowerEdge Expandable RAID controller 5
> 
> It is set up as RAID 10
> 
> I tried running smartctl on it, but that does not even work because the
> system sees the array as just one disk.
> 
> I'm wondering how I can monitor the disks, etc...
> 
> Any advice?

At http://linux.dell.com/ you can find firmware updates and the software
needed to monitor every piece of hardware of your server.

> Thanks
> Rick

ciao
andrea
-- 
Andrea Dell'Amico - <http://www.link.it/>


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