Topic: Using older Dell Hardware

[edform]

I have  a number of situations where SME 6 servers live on Dell hardware with PercII controllers carrying hardware RAID setups.

There is no support for this family of controllers any more, and the drivers are missing from SME7. The PercII controllers never did have much reputation for speed, so can I pull them, and simply connect the disks direct to the onboard Adaptec controllers that the Perc piggybacks on? If I do what is the likely speed outcome?

I have also seen some discussion of hotswap in the new software RAID system. Is this possible.

Ed Form

[gordonr]

I have  a number of situations where SME 6 servers live on Dell hardware with PercII controllers carrying hardware RAID setups.

There is no support for this family of controllers any more, and the drivers are missing from SME7.

Yep - if the driver is not in the CentOS kernel, it won't be in SME7. We simply do not have the resources to maintain kernel drivers.

There is a workaround/install HOWTO here which may help:

http://smeserver.sourceforge.net/sme70/KnownIssues

The PercII controllers never did have much reputation for speed, so can I pull them, and simply connect the disks direct to the onboard Adaptec controllers that the Perc piggybacks on? If I do what is the likely speed outcome?

I would be quite surprised if you could safely pull and reattach the disks while they are in a mirrored pair. However, I'd guess (note guess) that you could break the mirror and then attach the good half to the onboard controller.

I have also seen some discussion of hotswap in the new software RAID system. Is this possible.

Ed Form

If your hardware supports it, yes. I have written a script /sbin/e-smith/add_mirror which makes it easy to add a new disk to an existing degraded (one-way) mirror.

[edform]

Thanks for the reply Gordon...

Yep - if the driver is not in the CentOS kernel, it won't be in SME7. We simply do not have the resources to maintain kernel drivers.

There is a workaround/install HOWTO here which may help:

http://smeserver.sourceforge.net/sme70/KnownIssues

No! It's time to move on. If I can't use the hardware as a native function of the distro I think it's better not to try. Secondhand high performance servers are tuppence these days.

My other questions were the real point of the post...

I would be quite surprised if you could safely pull and reattach the disks while they are in a mirrored pair. However, I'd guess (note guess) that you could break the mirror and then attach the good half to the onboard controller.

I meant that I would reconfigure the whole machine to run the disks direct on the Adaptec SCSI sockets on the board. The existing mirror would be broken deliberately. I'd probably put a low cost SCSI board in for the ancilliaries so that both of the onboard channels are available for the software RAID setup.

I'll take a look at the hotswap situation - it might be a good thing for others to know about. There are a lot of PowerEdge servers out there.

Ed Form[/quote]

[DanB35]

FWIW, I was in the same situation, and upgraded my PERC2 to a PERC3.  Supported out of the box by CentOS 4.x as well as SME 6.0.1.  I think it was about $70 from eBay.