RAID on HP ML110 G5

[Nejc Škoberne]

Hey Tom,

> I would like to run FreeBSD 7 on a HP ML110 G5. I understand from past posts 
> to this list that the ML110 series is FreeBSD friendly, but what about RAID 1 
> using the on-board SATA controller? Will this work and how do you set this 
> up?

I have just configured a ML110G5 with FreeBSD 7 a few days ago. If you try to make
a BIOS RAID (create an array in RAID controller BIOS), then FreeBSD won't recognize
it as it does not understand the metadata format which controller BIOS uses to
manage the arrays. What you have to do is (having RAID mode in BIOS still enabled)
boot the server with FreeBSD 7 CD and then go to Fixit utility. There you can create
"hardware" (see previous posts about this being hardware RAID) RAID with "atacontrol"
utility. This way, FreeBSD will use its own metadata format for the array and will
recognize such arrays as "arX" devices. Restarting the box you can then install
FreeBSD easily on these arX devices like on normal adX or daX devices. So remember,
this is not the "real" FreeBSD software RAID since it is not controlled by FreeBSD
kernel but by the SATA/RAID controller. For example, I have 4 drives and I created
RAID-0 (stripes) with atacontrol and will merge them (in a few days) into a RAID-1
gmirror.

Hope that helps,
Nejc