Topic: SME Server 7.0 release status (see thread in SME 7.x forum)

[frajar]

Thanks for answer Charlie ang Greg.

I have installed on SME6.0.1 mkCDrec recovery utillity (http://mkcdrec.indyramp.net/project/index.html) and work great without software raid. On SME 7.0 A26 this utility don't work OK for me and I think if I disable software raid that I will solve the problem. I must find another solution.
Thanks again for answers.

Frajar

[wellsi]

Congratulations to the Core Dev Team for bringing SME 7 to Beta

SME 7 Beta 1 Changelog and RPM List have been updated in the wiki.

As usual these are available from the Development and Upcoming Releases  pages.


Some details of where the RPMs came from:
http://wellsi.com/sme/info/smebase.php?v=s7b1

Information on all recent releases can be found here.
http://wellsi.com/sme/info/releases.html

[gregswallow]

Thanks for answer Charlie ang Greg.

I have installed on SME6.0.1 mkCDrec recovery utillity (http://mkcdrec.indyramp.net/project/index.html) and work great without software raid. On SME 7.0 A26 this utility don't work OK for me and I think if I disable software raid that I will solve the problem. I must find another solution.
Thanks again for answers.

Frajar

I looked at that webpage - do you have the 0.8.7 version?  From the changelog it seems that it should work with only the latest version:
 - rd-base.sh: added support for mdadm type of Software Raid (gdha, 17/Apr/05)

[frajar]

Yes I have a latest version 0.8.7 and I don't have any luck with restore and then with boot.

[gla]

Hi Greg,

I'm sorry, but I'm not agree with you.
In fact, you're right when you say

It is a misconception is that software raid is inferior. You'll find many opinions if you search around the net, but when people take the time to test and document, they usually conclude that on today's fast CPU's, Linux software raid is just as good or better.

Of course, Hardware Raid implementation are software embeded in hard stuff... then software RAID and hardware RAID can have the same performance
But I think the problem is not really here.
In hardware raid, you can have a specialized processor and dedicated memory to do the job.
In software raid, the process use the central processor and RAM, to do it.

I think the interest in implementing hardware raid is to use dedicated solution to do it and let the processor and the central memory to make the job you paid for...

Of course in SME solution, it's a good idea to force the software RAID by default, but if they can buy good server with strong hardware RAID support, I think the good solution is to let the admins decide between hard/soft raid.

my 2 cents.

[Michiel]

1) I noticed that the spamassassin config doesn't include the ability to add whitelists or blacklists. As knuddi's
contribution did. Will that be part of the eventual config?

<snip>

Anyway, I'll talk with Knuddi to see what we can do.

Knuddi's SA panel is probably one of the most popular contribs around (5100 installs to date). Any particular reason why this panel (or something similar) isn't included in the 7b1 distro?

regards,
Michiel

[gregswallow]

I think the interest in implementing hardware raid is to use dedicated solution to do it and let the processor and the central memory to make the job you paid for...

Sure, I think if the CPU and RAM in the system was completely being utilized, then a real hardware raid card with its own cpu/ram would improve performance.  I'd still like to see benchmark results proving it.  

Of course in SME solution, it's a good idea to force the software RAID by default, but if they can buy good server with strong hardware RAID support, I think the good solution is to let the admins decide between hard/soft raid.

I agree with that, but from Charlie's commments it doesn't seem easy to do.  Things seemed to have changed a bit in beta1, so it may be better to ask the question on one of the developer lists...

[hanscees]

I have installed all the things I usually do and found no problems at all. Great! Thanks for the good job!

I will proceed to install awstats and the like.

Hans-Cees

[gordonr]

Knuddi's SA panel is probably one of the most popular contribs around (5100 installs to date). Any particular reason why this panel (or something similar) isn't included in the 7b1 distro?

Something similar is included - the panel in 7.0beta1 is based on the code at the point when the package forked a few times. I meant no offence to Knuddi - I just chose one of the forks.

I also wanted to strip it back to the minimal requirements. Many of options are not required in the panel (e.g. HTTP proxy - we have one of those, Database mirror - we can use db.local.clamav.net, package updates - yum can do this, etc.). The options are still there, but hidden from view.

We also worked clamav into the 7.0 mail system, and supervised updates, etc. Pulling something into the base is a good time to give it a good run through. My plan is to merge back anything which has been left out.

If there's anything critical I've left out, please let me know via the bug tracker, and apologies.

[CharlieBrady]

Of course in SME solution, it's a good idea to force the software RAID by default, but if they can buy good server with strong hardware RAID support, I think the good solution is to let the admins decide between hard/soft raid.

They do have that choice. If they buy hardware RAID devices, the hardware RAID will do its job, and show only a single disk to linux. In 7.0, we will still install software RAID over that one "disk", but it will be in degraded one-disk mode, which effectively adds no workload to the main CPU.

[gordonr]

They do have that choice. If they buy hardware RAID devices, the hardware RAID will do its job, and show only a single disk to linux. In 7.0, we will still install software RAID over that one "disk", but it will be in degraded one-disk mode, which effectively adds no workload to the main CPU.

Note that if you do have a hardware RAID controller, you should be careful about which volumes can be seen by the installer. If you have two hardware RAID volumes, they will end up also as a software RAID mirror (i.e. mirrored both in hardware and software).

The default for 7.0 is:
- one disk: single way RAID1 mirror
- two disks: two way RAID1 mirror
- 3-5 disks: RAID5
- 6 or more disks: RAID6

If you don't like this default setup, don't export the volumes until after the install. Or create a KickStart configuration file to do it some other way.

[dmajwool]

- 3-5 disks: RAID5
- 6 or more disks: RAID6

Very interesting.  Are there many non-scsi products that allow the OS to see more than 4 independent disks?

[gordonr]

- 3-5 disks: RAID5
- 6 or more disks: RAID6

Very interesting.  Are there many non-scsi products that allow the OS to see more than 4 independent disks?

I believe you can with SATA (which is seen as SCSI).

[treyh]

I had to use a custom ISO, compiled with sata support, to get 1 of my dell servers going.

I hope the support for this, in sme 7, will be much better.

[gordonr]

I had to use a custom ISO, compiled with sata support, to get 1 of my dell servers going.

Sure - SATA drives were not supported by previous releases.

I hope the support for this, in sme 7, will be much better.

My server has a pair of mirrored SATA drives - I'm very happy with it. If it doesn't work for you, please let us know in the bug tracker.