freebsd-8 support for dell R710 SATA raid-0

[Adam Vande More]

On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 7:53 AM, John <comp.john at googlemail.com> wrote:

> Hello list
>
> I've run into a bit of an impasse with freebsd8 nd dell R710 server.
> Basically it has 3x 2TB disks (SATA) connected to a LSI card (on the
> order it is referred to as SAS6IR/PERC H200). I make the virtual disk on
> the SATA card (raid0 gives about 5.4Tb) but freebsd, after sysinstall
> loads and I set the timezone and keyboard, won't see the disk.
>
> I am accessing the server remotely via IDRAC6. This means I have a great
> deal of difficulty grabbing the console with alt-f2 on bootup.
>
> I have the feeling that maybe I have to pass a parameter to freebsd boot
> to make it see the virtual disk. Is this the cade? Or is the card just
> pants? Or is it not possible to boot over 2Tb? Or perhaps I need to boot
> a running system from a SD card, and then make the virtual disk?
>
> Or is it a sysinstall issue? Or a card issue? Freebsd sees the card (at
> least freebsd-9 did) but not the disk (same as freebsd-8)
>
> FWIW CentOS won't see it either. Please help!
>

You'll need to use GPT partition instead of MBR if you're trying to boot
with a size > TB.  AKAIK, sysinstall doesn't support this, requiring a more
"hands on" installation.

If you haven't considered it, it may be worthwhile to use ZFS.  In that
scenario, you'd want to the controller to present the disks as JBOD and use
RAIDZ.  Once again, sysinstall doesn't support this, but there are some good
FreeBSD wiki articles on it.

-- 
Adam Vande More