Trouble with HP Proliant DL145 G2

[Kelly Lesperance]

Hi Eugene,

> Hi, All!
>
> Some time ago I got a new HP Proliant DL 145 G2 with 2 SATA disks.
> During its first boot I saw that it doesn't support hardware array,
> but there was a message on the screen 'nVivia IDE RAID' or something
> like that and the next message was about having an array of 2 disks.
>
> So I was to involve using GMIRROR with my FreeBSD 6.1 box. And
> recently, after cold power off, one of its disks failed. So the fact
> of the matter is to find out, is there a hardware RAID 1 support or
> not and if not what is the messages shown above?

At first I thought the chipset (nForce Pro) used for the DL145 G2 supports 
nVidia's RAID, but HP chose not to implement it.  HP doesn't list RAID 
capability in any of the documentation, and I was never able to access a 
utility to configure it.  Now that I research it a bit further, it seems 
somewhat more complicated.

It looks as though nvRAID might be some kind of fake RAID, which is a kind 
of quasi hardware/software RAID.  Basic functionality is incorporated into 
the hardware, but other functions are performed by the driver.  You can find 
some info here http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html#nvidia and here 
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html#fakeraid.  It sounds as though 
you'd be better served by implementing your own RAID rather than using the 
nvRAID, which is fortunate, since nVidia hasn't released FreeBSD drivers 
anyway.

Hope that helps,

Kelly Lesperance