RAID

[kalin m]

thanks....

i read the atacontrol man. there is a part in there that says:
..............
 A quick and dirty way to create such a mirrored array (RAID1) on a new 
system is
     to boot off the FreeBSD install CD, do a minimal scratch install, abort
     out of the post install questions, and at the command line issue 
the com-
     mand:

           atacontrol create RAID1 ad4 ad6

     then immediately issue a reboot and boot from the installation CD 
again,
     and during the installation, you will now see "ar0" listed as a disk to
     install on, and install on that instead of ad4, ad6, etc.
.............

in my case the machine showed me the ar0 to install the system on it 
without doing this 'quick and dirty way'.

and now i get:
# atacontrol status ar0
ar0: ATA RAID1 status: READY
 subdisks:
   0 ad4  ONLINE
   1 ad6  ONLINE


that tells me that i actually do have RAID1 active. which means it's a 
software one, correct?

also if you do not mind please elaborate on "MatrixRAID is one of those 
not-really-raid controllers that onlyprovides RAID during the boot 
process..."


thank you...



Dan Nelson wrote:
> In the last episode (Mar 11), kalin m said:
>   
>> thanks....
>> i did install the system now on ar0. the dmesg output below didn't change. 
>> the df does show only one drive - ar0 - with a few slices...
>> assuming now that i have RAID1 working is there any way to monitor disks 
>> individually? or as an array?
>> how can i be sure that the RAID is actually working? or get any stats?
>> i figured the driver for the <Intel MatrixRAID RAID1> must be iir. bit from 
>> the iir man page ther is not much about monitoring or status...
>>     
>
> MatrixRAID is one of those not-really-raid controllers that only
> provides RAID during the boot process, and the OS has to implement RAID
> in software itself.  FreeBSD has an ataraid driver to handle these
> cards.  The atacontrol command lets you view status.  See the ataraid
> and atacontrol manpages for more info.
>
>