6.0 on Dell 1850 with PERC4e/DC RAID?

[Scott Mitchell]

On Fri, Jan 06, 2006 at 10:35:46AM -0500, Vivek Khera wrote:
> 
> On Jan 5, 2006, at 5:41 PM, Scott Mitchell wrote:
> 
> >I may be getting a new Dell PE1850 soon, to replace our ancient CVS  
> >server
> >(still running 4-STABLE).  The new machine will ideally run 6.0 and  
> >have a
> >PERC4e/DC RAID card - the one with battery-backed cache.  This is  
> >listed as
> 
> I have an 1850 with the buil-in PERC 4e/Si since all I needed was the  
> RAID1 mirror of the internal drives.  It works extremely well, and  
> the speed is quite good.

We'll only be mirroring the internal drives too for now - the 4e/DC seems
to be the only RAID option on the 1850 with battery-backed cache, and
doesn't cost much more for the extra peace-of-mind.

> As for notices of when the drives go bad, under 4.x I've had disk  
> failures with the amr driver (different PERC cards) and not gotten  
> any such notices in the syslog that I recall.

That's a pity.  Maybe Doug was thinking of one of the aac(4) based PERC
cards?  Still, something I can run out of cron to check the array status
should be fine.

> I did find a program   
> posted to one of the freebsd lists called 'amrstat' that I run  
> nightly.  It produces this kind of output:
> 
> Drive 0:    68.24 GB, RAID1 <writeback,no-read-ahead,no-adaptative- 
> io> optimal
> 
> If it says "degraded" it is time to fix a drive.   You just fire up  
> the lsi megaraid tools and find out which drive it is.
> 
> If you go to the LSI download area, they have one file for FreeBSD,  
> which is labeled the driver.  In that zip file is also the management  
> software for freebsd.  You'll want that.  Personally, I like the  
> "MEGAMGR" software which was released for freebsd 4.x and mimics the  
> BIOS' interface in a terminal window.

There's a port of the management software now: sysutils/megarc

> The rebuild on LSI controllers is set to automatic on the dells as  
> default.  It just works as expected.

Cool.

> Overall, I'm a big fan of the LSI cards and the amr driver...
> 
> Unfortunately for me, the latest equipment I just got only takes low- 
> profile cards, and LSI doesn't offer a dual channel RAID card in low- 
> profile configuration... so I need to look at adaptec.

This is on your x4100?  Nice machine.  We have a v20z with dual Opteron
270s that I totally love.  Looking at getting an x4100 too... sadly these
are product development machines so they'll be running RedHat and Solaris.
Doesn't the x4100 have h/w RAID built in?  Or does that not work with
FreeBSD?

	Scott

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