mfi (Dell H700) + hot swapping doesn't appear to work with RC1

[Andrew Boyer]

On Dec 16, 2011, at 12:47 AM, Jan Mikkelsen wrote:
> On 16/12/2011, at 3:40 AM, Andrew Boyer wrote:
>> On Dec 15, 2011, at 4:19 AM, Jan Mikkelsen wrote:
>> 
>>> For the mfi controllers I have been testing recently (MegaRAID 9261-8i), you need to install the sysutils/megacli port, and use that to clear the "foreignness" of the disk you just added. Something like:
>>> 
>>> MegaCli -CfgForeign -Clear -a0
>> 
>> I don't think that's what you want.  You want to use -Import, not -Clear, to keep your data intact.
> 
> OK. When I did a -Clear and recreated the drive as a single disk raid0 volume, the data was still there, but I wanted it to go away.

The RAID identity is stored on a 512MB partition at the end of the disk.  Clearing and recreating it doesn't actually affect your data, as you discovered.  You can even plug one of your RAID0 disks into a non-RAID controller and your data will be there.

mfiutil has a 'drive clear' feature to zero disks.  Or you could just dd a few megs of zeroes to the beginning of the disk.

> 
>> I recommend you always run with this configuration:
>> 
>> # MegaCli -AdpSetProp AutoEnhancedImportEnbl -aALL
>> # MegaCli -AdpSetProp MaintainPdFailHistoryEnbl -0 -aALL
>> 
>> AutoEnhancedImportEnbl will bring the foreign disk back in on a reboot.  LSI recommends turning off MaintainPdFailHistory when using single-disk RAID0 configurations.
> 
> What does PD Fail History actually do?

See: http://kb.lsi.com/KnowledgebaseArticle16570.aspx

-Andrew

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Andrew Boyer	aboyer at averesystems.com