3ware raid

[Carroll Kong]

Interesting.  I have 3 3Ware 7xxxs.  (2 7500-4LP, 1 7450)  The 7450 one on a
busy server is experiencing some pretty nasty problems.

You can google for the thread with this subject.

3ware 7506,  FreeBSD 4.x,  Maxtor Disks & SMART Problem

So far, once we backed off on the I/O load and as a result, the system has
been running solid.  I have not fully identified the problem, but I here is
a list of things to watch out for

1)  Do not use "hot swap"/"cold swap" systems.  I agree with Mike now, and I
believe I am paying the price for using a cold swap system.  We plan on
replacing the IDE backplane in hopes that it will resolve the issue.  I am
guessing nice swap systems are reserved for SCSI SCA for now.

2)  Avoid using riser cards if you can.  3Ware claims to have fixed their
issues, but put up the usual "cover your [butt]" disclaimers.  Better safe
than sorry, avoid using a riser card if you can.

3)  Avoid using Maxtor disks with it.  Yes, I know a lot of people have it
working fine.  Heck, my 2 7500-4LPs are working fine with Maxtors
throughout.  (2 in RAID1 under Win2k, 4 in RAID10 under FreeBSD 4.X)  But,
if you have a choice why risk it?

4)  Monitor the system carefully.  Apparently in DEGRADED mode, the system
has a high chance of complete lockups if left unattended.  It is important
to note that the 3Ware controller is very sensitive.  People have gone into
DEGRADED mode randomly because of slight power drops or "bad" IDE cabling.

Of course, your mileage may vary.  I will let you know if the backplane swap
out fixes everything.  For now, we want to enjoy some real uptime and hold
off on the upgrade as long as we can.



- Carroll Kong
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Tancsa" <mike at sentex.net>
To: <cmills at borderware.com>
Cc: <freebsd-stable at freebsd.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 26, 2004 5:10 PM
Subject: Re: 3ware raid


> At 04:30 PM 26/10/2004, Darren Pilgrim wrote:
> > > Hello
> > >
> > > I was wandering if anybody out there has had any success using 3ware
> > > 7506-8 cards with Freebsd 4.10. I  was previously using a Promise
> > > controller SX6000, and was having problems with this card.
> >
> >This is something of a FAQ.
> >
> >There's a long list of people using 3ware 6/7/8xxx series cards in
FreeBSD
> >4.x boxes with great success.  AFAIK that extends to 5.x as well.
>
> Yes, I am one who always seems to pipe up.  I use this very card
> specifically on a busy pop3/imap server.  The mail spool is made up of 4
> drives in RAID10 and 2 other ports are used for the base OS in RAID1.  Its
> been in service in this config for over a year without issue.
>
> When it comes time to replace bad drives, all has worked as expected for
> us.  We dont use hot swap trays (dont really trust the electrical design
of
> many of them), so we do it while powered down.  Literally, shutdown, pull
> the bad drive, put in the new, go into the BIOS (or you can use the cmd
> line tools), add the new drive to the RAID set, exit out and let it boot
> and thats it.  The controller rebuilds in the background and notifies you
> when done.
>
> There were at some point a bad batch of 7000 series cards that needed to
be
> RMA'd (perhaps 2+ yrs ago now ?).  But other than that one time hardware
> issue, they work great on all the platforms we have (i386 on FreeBSD,
> Linux, Win2k).
>
> We also use most of the other cards, except for the 9xxx series which we
> have no experience with yet.
>
>          ---Mike
>
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