Author: James Courtier-Dutton Date: To: adrian, Hampshire LUG Discussion List CC: Subject: Re: [Hampshire] Monitoring Hardware RAID Controllers from Linux
On 31/10/2007, Adrian Bridgett <adrian@???> wrote: > On Wed, Oct 31, 2007 at 16:19:50 +0000 (+0000), Simon Capstick wrote:
> > We have been using 3ware SATA RAID controllers (9500S if I remember
> > correctly) on Debian for a few years now. I don't think they break
> > any speed records but they seem to be reliable and easy to use. I
> > get email status notifications (including write-cache battery
> > status) with the supplied 3dm2 software. It has a nice easy to use
> > web interface too.
>
> ah, wondered what that was, I know it better as "tw_cli".
>
> My experiences with 3ware have not been good. To be fair, this is
> mostly down the fact that the servers with them in have the el-cheapo
> non-battery backed model.
>
> If the servers are powered off due to hosting companies either losing
> power or lazy sysadmins (who shall not be named), the RAID-1 array
> frequently fell out of sync - and then required a manual kick to bring
> it back online.
>
> Oddly it seems to require the 64-bit (statically linked (ew!)) binary
> on boxes with 32bit userspace, 64bit kernel.
>
> The Dell PERC5i (actually LSILogic) cards OTOH were battery backed and
> work fine. At least once you turn the write cache on - otherwise they
> are _dreadfully_ slow. As to why all our boxes came without it turned
> on, I've no idea.
>
> Adrian
> --
I have a "Dell PowerEdge RAID Controller PERC4e/DC"
I have not yet found out how to use the ioctl interface to get status
on the device. It seems the Dell tool to do this is not open source.
A simple open source user space ioctl to snmp interface would be nice,
then standard web based monitoring tools could use it.
